Pakistan Super League team Karachi Kings Trinidadian head coach Phil Simmons has praised Peshawar Zalmi captain and former Pakistan national team all-format captain Babar Azam for being one of the best players in cricket of all 3 formats at the moment. Simmons made these comments while speaking to a local Pakistani media on the eve of the opening match of PSL 9 between Multan Sultans and Lahore Qalandars.
Babar Azam was named the most expensive player ever during the PSL player draft by the Zalmis for a sum exceeding 2 million Pakistani rupees.
The star batsman will play his second season with the Peshawar team. Babar first entered the PSL scene, playing for Islamabad United in 2016 before being selected by the Karachi-based team ahead of the 2017 edition. He has scored most of his 2935 PSL runs in his 6 seasons with the Karachi-based team from 2017 to 2022.
The 29-year-old is the leading run-scorer in Pakistan’s most anticipated sporting competition in 79 matches with an average of 43.80, including one century and 28 half-centuries. One of the main reasons why Peshawar Zalmi spent over Rs 2 million on Babar Azam was to try to recapture the glory days.
Peshawar Zalmi was the winner of the PSL season in 2017 and finished third in the points table last year and failed to reach the final after losing to eventual winners Lahore Qalandars in the Eliminator 2 match at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore .
This year they have a strong squad with players like Shamar Joseph (partially), Aamer Jamal, Saim Ayub, Tom. Kohler-Cadmore and Asif Ali, among others. And when they already have a leader like Babar Azam, the PSL title could return to Peshawar for the second time.
“There is nothing he hasn’t done” – Phil Simmons comments on Babar Azam
Meanwhile, Babar’s former team’s head coach Phil Simmons feels that the most expensive entity in the PSL has been trying its best in all formats and will end up as the country’s best batsman to ever play the sport.
Simmons stated that it is the least compliment he can offer Babar Azam, whose team will be in action in the second match of PSL 9 against the Quetta Gladiators in Lahore.
“He has been one of the best players in the world, in all three formats for some time now. There is nothing he hasn’t done in all three formats. He is bored with being one of the greats of Pakistan cricket or world cricket at the end of his career. So that’s the least compliment I can give him, he’s up there and will be for a while.” – Simmons told Cricket Pakistan.
Peshawar Zalmi Team for PSL 9: Babar Azam, Asif Ali, Aimal Khan, Salman Irshad, Daniel Mousely, Mohammad Zeeshan, Arshad Iqbal, Shamar Joseph, Luke Wood, Sufyan Muqeem, Mehran Mumtaz, Haseebullah Khan, Waqar Salimkheil, Khurram Shahzad, Arif Yaqoob, Saim Ayub, Aamer Jamal, Rovman Powell, Gus Atkinson, Tom Kohler-Cadmore, Mohammad Haris, Umair Afridi
