Reigning champions Quetta Gladiators to make the first pick in HBL PSL 2020 Player Draft

HBL Pakistan Super League Player Draft pick order for the 2020 season was announced today following the first-round pick order reveal on Sunday.

Chairman PCB Ehsan Mani, Chief Executive Officer Wasim Khan, owners and representatives of the HBL PSL franchises and representatives of the league partners HBL and Blitz Advertising gathered at the Gaddafi Stadium on Sunday to determine the pick order of the first round of the HBL PSL 2020 Player Draft.  

The first round picks were revealed through the depiction of an age-old street cricket tradition involving the cricket bat.

Reigning HBL PSL champions Quetta Gladiators got the first pick, Lahore Qalandars second, Multan Sultans third, two-time former champions Islamabad United fourth, former champions Peshawar Zalmi got the fifth while Karachi Kings had to settle for the sixth and final pick in the order determined using the cricket bat method.

On Monday, a specially-designed statistical model was used to decide the pick order for the remaining 17 rounds of the Draft.

With the release of the pick order, the transfer and retention window for HBL PSL 2020 has officially opened as teams negotiate for exciting trade possibilities.

As part of this year’s Draft policy, each team can retain up to eight players from last year’s roster. The requirement for teams to pick five foreign players in a squad of 16 players remains unchanged from the previous editions of the HBL PSL.

In addition, teams will be allowed to pick two supplementary players out of which one can be a foreign player.

However teams will have a chance to field a minimum of three and a maximum of four foreign players in the XI.

HBL PSL will be introducing the wildcard pick rule for the 2020 season. A wildcard pick enables teams to pick players from Silver or Gold in the Diamond category round or, alternatively, a player from Silver in the Gold category round at the Draft. Each team will be allowed to exercise one wildcard pick at the Draft and bump-up a player accordingly.

Chief Executive Officer PCB Wasim Khan said: “We are constantly trying to improve and explore new and exciting possibilities in the HBL Pakistan Super League. The wildcard pick rule is one such addition and we feel that it will make the HBL PSL Player Draft even more exciting for our fans and teams.

“The selection strategies will need to adapt to the constantly changing scenarios which will make the teams come up with some out of the box plans as they will have to pre-empt other teams’ wildcard picks. We look forward to a very interesting phase in the lead-up to the Player Draft as teams review their retention possibilities and negotiate potential deals with other teams in the transfer window.”

The HBL PSL 2020 will be staged in Pakistan with action set to start in February 2020.