Pakistan super league franchise, Lahore Qalandars, are set to rope in the aggressive batsman and former New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum to lead the franchise for the franchise in the upcoming PSL season. McCullum will replace the current captain of the franchise, Azhar Ali, who is also the captain of Pakistan ODI team. To take a note, Lahore Qalandars finished last in the points table previous year under Azhar Ali’s captaincy.
Nowadays Azhar’s role as Pakistan captain is also under a cloud due to their poor show in England. Pakistan, after finishing Test series with an equal number of wins as England, lost the ODI series by a margin of 1-4. From then there were speculations that Azhar might be dropped as captain but selectors decided to trust Azhar for one more time for the series against West Indies to be played in their second home, U.A.E.
“We are bringing in McCullum, whose credibility and performances as captain are tremendous. We are signing him not only as captain but as a batting mentor as well.
“We are announcing it earlier because we want to take the captain on board so that we can make a better combination than the one we had last year. We are really happy to have him on board and the level of commitment he has shown so far is really great,” Aqib Javed, Lahore ‘s franchise director told ESPNcricinfo.
“Azhar is a great human being and does have the leadership qualities, but you can’t compare him with Brendon at all.
“There is no comparison between the two players. Last year, unfortunately, we didn’t do well and now we want to make a winning combination. With Brendon on board, we want to start planning much earlier to make a difference. This won’t hamper Azhar’s national captaincy at all, but Brendon was a much better choice,” Javed added.
The draft for the upcoming PSL season will be held next month in Dubai and Lahore will be given first chance to pick a player in each round. Their first choice will be Brendon McCullum, whom they are set to rope in as the captain of their franchise.
McCullum retired from international cricket earlier this year in the month of January. Since then, he has been an active participant in many T20 leagues which includes IPL, CPL etc. Lahore franchise has high hopes from him and he has a responsibility to turn the fortunes of the franchise this season.