High-spirited Rana Fawad says selfless Qalandars won't let fans down

KARACHI: The second edition of Pakistan Super League (PSL) is just around the corner, teams preparing hard to grab the title this year, on road to the second edition different teams have kept fans and players engaged in different activities.

Those who witnessed the first edition of Pakistan’s prestigious T20 league, glimpse of a moustachioed man emotionally involved with every moment of the match is still fresh. The man, the owner of PSL team Lahore Qalandars, Rana Fawad is once again ready for the action.

“I am basically very emotional person. I get emotionally involved with everything, I cheer and celebrate every positive movement and cry when I see things going wrong,” said Rana Fawad while talking to geo.tv

“I am very passionate about cricket and always emotionally charged when Pakistan is playing. I have a good track record of breaking remote controls at home. For me, team Lahore Qalandars was like Pakistan and I wanted to win every match, and that’s why I was so emotionally involved,” he said.

However, Fawad says he enjoyed every moment of it because he was representing feelings of Lahori people and later people of Lahore reciprocated it by giving him huge respect.

“I didn’t know that my expressions were coming on camera, they were my genuine feelings,” he added.

Fawad Rana, who’s also MD of QALCO, said that the catch behind the name “Qalandars” was to pay tribute to all the mothers, who are most selfless creation on earth.

According to him, names like Thunders, Knight Riders, Daredevils, and Lions are irrelevant in cricket because these names do not represent the gentlemen spirit of cricket.

“I always use to think why league teams in cricket are named like thunders, lions, knight riders or daredevils, what they have to do with cricket. Cricket is a beautiful game, and a gentlemen game,” Rana explained, adding that the story of Lahore Qalandars is very close to his heart.

“This (Qalandar) is a divine name, it is all about being selfless. This name is a tribute to all mothers, who are most selfless human on earth. Mothers who have given us stalwarts like Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Inzamam, Aqib Javed and Miandad. And, this Qalandar will surely give Pakistan more stalwarts like this. So, this is dedicated to all the mothers… my mother, your mother and all the mothers,” he added.

Lahore Qalandars, despite having the services of hard-hitting Chris Gayle on the team, could not do well and finished fifth in the first edition of five-team tournament.

Since then, the team has brought a lot of changes including the change in captaincy with Brendon McCullum taking the leader’s role from Azhar Ali. The franchise also hosted a long players’ development program and picked five emerging players to represent the side in the second edition.

Rana believes that they have learnt the lessons from the mistakes they made in the first edition and are confident that this year, team Lahore Qalandars will not let the fans down.

“We didn’t have proper team in last season, then we lost Mustafeez and Yasir Shah before the start of the tournament, and we didn’t have proper experience of cricketing matters before. But we learnt from mistakes and made a proper cricketing committee,” he said.

“Our experience of last 12 months will be the biggest different between Lahore and other teams in PSL 2, We have pure professional cricketing brain with us, we have a highly-motivated team, we need to give Lahore something to cheer about and we’ll put 120% for us,” he expressed.