Kavya Maran, the owner of the Sunrisers Hyderabad franchise in the IPL, has created bit of a stir in the country. The group also has stakes in England’s The Hundred competition, and during the auction for the 2026 edition, the Sunrisers Leeds team, led by Kavya, went on to bag Pakistan player Abrar Ahmed for £190k.
BCCI has no say in The Hundred
While all the other Indian owners refrained from bidding for Pakistanis — the Sunrisers team went ahead with the purchase. The same was shared on social as well. But that is not very well taken by the fans back home. There has of course been some backlash on social media.
Now, almost after a day, the BCCI has offered its take. BCCI vice president Rajeev Shukla said on Friday, that they don’t have a say in what the Sunrisers Leeds end up doing. “Our domain is limited to the IPL. We have nothing to do with what they do in a league outside that. How can we interfere with them signing a player in a foreign league,” Shukla told ANI.
“That’s upto them. It’s purely upto the franchise who have bought a team outside India. If they are taking some player outside India in that league, we are least concerned because, in IPL there is no such player,” he added. There were some concerns raised earlier, about the Indian owners not bidding for Pakistani players..
And that suit was followed for all players alike — except for Abrar Ahmed. Even a hot commodity Usman Tariq was bought by non-Indian owned Birmingham Phoenix. On the other hand, there were no takers for the likes of Saim Ayub, Haris Rauf and Shadab Khan.
Full Squad of Sunrisers Leeds
Sunrisers Leeds: Nathan Ellis, Mitchell Marsh, Harry Brook, Brydon Carse, Abrar Ahmed, Benny Howell, Daniel Lawrence, Tom Lawes, Matthew Potts, Tom Alsop, Zak Crawley, Ryan Rickelton, Liam Patterson-White, Ed Barnard, Reece Topley.
