Sunrisers Leeds ropes in Pakistani player for The Hundred:Kavya Maran bids ₹2.34 crore for Abrar Ahmed; 3 PAK cricketers unsold

Indian-owned franchise Sunrisers Leeds bid on Pakistan’s mystery spinner Abrar Ahmed on Thursday. Sunrisers CEO Kavya Maran herself bought him for 1.90 lakh pounds (approximately 2.34 crore rupees). With this, Abrar became the first Pakistani player to join an Indian-owned franchise in The Hundred league, starting July 21. Due to tense relations between India and Pakistan, IPL franchises have not signed any Pakistani players since 2009. Chennai’s media company Sun Group had purchased 49% stake in Northern Superchargers from ECB last year and the remaining 51% from Yorkshire County Club for about 10 million pounds. After this, the team was renamed to Sunrisers Leeds. See Sunrisers Leeds’ post… Controversy happened over Bangladesh’s Mustafizur Rahman IPL franchise Kolkata Knight Riders (IPL) had bought Bangladesh fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman for Rs 9.20 crore in the IPL 2026 mini auction in Abu Dhabi on December 16, 2025. After this, protests started in India due to the killings of Hindus in Bangladesh. On BCCI’s instruction, KKR released Rahman. Angered by this, the Bangladeshi government banned the broadcast of IPL in their country. Not only this, Bangladesh refused to play the T20 World Cup in India. In such a situation, ICC removed Bangladesh from the T20 World Cup itself. Scotland was included in the T20 World Cup in place of Bangladesh. Pakistan had boycotted the match against India in T20 WC 2026 The Pakistani government had boycotted the match against India in the T-20 World Cup. However, after the intervention of the Sri Lankan President, the Pakistani government approved the match against India. In this match played on February 15 in Colombo, the Indian team won by a margin of 61 runs. Ishan Kishan had scored a fifty against Pakistan. Sun Group owns Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPL and Sunrisers Eastern Cape in SA20, but these teams currently don’t have any Pakistani players. The second Pakistani player sold in the auction was mystery spinner Usman Tariq, who was bought by Birmingham Phoenix for 1.40 lakh pounds. However, Pakistan’s fast bowler Haris Rauf and off-spin all-rounder Sam Ayub remained unsold.