Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan among other stars go unsold at The Hundred 2023 player draft

Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan. (Photo Source: Alex Davidson/Getty Images)

The Hundred’s draft on Thursday, March 23 saw numerous big names going unsold and teams going actively for domestic players. The international stars that went unsold included the likes of Pakistan skipper Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan, Andre Russell, Kieron Pollard, Trent Boult among others.

The draft saw as many as 30 men’s cricketers getting picked across eight teams. Welsh Fire’s newly appointed coach Michael Hussey roped in Tom Abell and the team made quite lot of addition to strenghten itself.

Although Babar and Rizwan turned out to be fairly unlucky, two of their teammates managed to secure a team. Pakistan’s pace spearhead Shaheen Afridi and tearaway pacer Haris Rauf were picked up by Welsh Fire as it clearly showed that it came as an attempt to strenghten themselves ahead of the upcoming season.

Meanwhile, Babar was seen leading Peshawar Zalmi in the recently culminated season of the Pakistan Super League (season 8). He successfully led the side to Eliminator 2 where Zalmi lost to eventual champions Lahore Qalandars. Babar led by example too as he finished the season as the second-leading run-getter behind Multan Sultans’ Mohammad Rizwan.

In 11 matches that Babar played throughout the course of season eight, he managed to score 522 runs at an average of 52.20 and a strike rate of 145.40, including his maiden PSL hundred. On the other hand, Sultans’ skipper Rizwan finished the season on a high personally as he ended up being the leading run-getter with 550 runs in 12 games at an average of 55.00 and a strike rate of 142.86.

He was also able to score a ton in season eight. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t take his team over the line in the summit clash against Qalandars as they lost the cliffhanger by just one run. The player who impressed many in the season gone by was Shaheen who led Qalandars to their second consecutive PSL title with a Player of the Match performance in the final.