Abrar Ahmed has become the first Pakistani player to be signed by one of the four Indian-owned Hundred teams, after he was bought by Sunrisers Leeds for £190,000 in the inaugural men’s player auction.
The signing was a badly needed relief for the England and Wales Cricket Board, which was recently forced to deny publicly reports that the four sides would operate a “shadow ban” on picking players from Pakistan. The Sunrisers are owned by the Sun media group, which runs the Indian Premier League franchise in Hyderabad and South Africa’s Sunrisers Eastern Cape. They had to fight hard for him after being drawn into a bidding war with the Trent Rockets.
