LAHORE - Lahore Qalandars Director Cricket Operations and former pacer Aaqib Javed and chief executive Rana Atif on Thursday said that they are proud of producing a third cricketer namely Syed Faridoun to Melbourne Stars, a franchise of Australian Big Bash League. 
Speaking at a function organised by Sports Journalists Association of Lahore (SJAL) here, Aaqib said: “Syed Faridoun, who as wrist spinner has been signed to represent Melbourne Stars in the Big Bash League of Australia, has amazing talent and he hopefully will dominate in the world of cricket soon.” 
He said Lahore Qalandars High Performance Centre had produced a third player to represent Melbourne Stars after sending Haris Rauf and Dilber Hussain. “19-year old Faridoun is from Lahore and presently he is in Australia and set to make his debut in competitive T20 cricket for the first time in his minor career so far. Faridoun had played U-16 and U-19 age level cricket for the city and he was also at the bench in the second leg of the PSL-5.” 

The former pacer said few wrist spinners were available at international cricket as India, South Africa and Afghanistan had such bowlers. He said Lahore Qalandar picked Faridoun watching his talent as wrist spinner and his talent was seconded by Afghanistan prominent bowler Rashid Khan too. “Although LQ could not win any edition of the PSL, it had produced bowlers like Shaheen Afridi, Fakhar Zaman, Haris Rauf, Dilber Hussain, Salman Irshad and Usman Qadir for Pakistan and that was the real purpose behind the formation of Lahore Qalandars. The franchise is considering an option to change Sohail Akhtar as Qalandars captain but he added it was just an opinion under consideration.”
Rana Atif said currently 128 players were getting training at the Lahore Qalandars’ Performance Centre and 20 percent of them were selected on their talent and remaining were on commercial basis. To a query, Atif said though new PCB chairman Ramiz Raja had solved some problems, being faced by all the six franchises, still lot of work was to be done to correct the mistakes in the basic model of the PSL, otherwise, it would continue to create problems and confusion between the two parties. He said the PSL had become a brand of the country and every step should be taken to bring it at par and that was possible after just removing the flaws in its basic model.