Fawad Ahmed Joins Aussie Team in Pakistan as spin consultant

Fawad Ahmed Joins Aussie Team in Pakistan as spin consultant

Fawad Ahmed, the Pakistan-born Australian leg-spinner visits his birth country as Australia’s spin consultant in their first historic visit to Pakistan after 24 years. 

The leg spinner has played 10 first-class matches in Pakistan. A decade ago, while living in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he was involved with a local NGO that advocated female education. The Taliban threatened him for that and made him flee to Australia in 2010 as an asylum seeker.

He waited for his Australian citizenship while working in a warehouse and playing for the Melbourne University club. After being granted citizenship in 2013, Fawad played five international matches for Australia.

Fawad will be consulting the team for the three-Test series and white-ball fixtures which starts in Rawalpindi on Friday. The Aussi team doesn’t have its regular subcontinent spin consultant Sridharan Sriram as he wasn’t able to secure a visa for the Pakistan tour.

Sriram had played eight one-day international matches for India between 2000 and 2004 and has been with Australia for their Asian tours since 2016.

The absent of Sriram paved way for 40-year-old Fawad to represent Aussi team as its spin consultant.

Fawad Ahmed

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Fawad is in Pakistan and was playing for Lahore Qalandars, replacing Afghanistan’s Rashid Khan. His side won the finals against Multan Sultans by 42 runs.

Since 2019, he played for the PSL tournament and represented three franchises while playing 23 matches.

After reaching Islamabad, Pat Cummins, the Australian skipper told the reporters: “It’s going to be great to have ‘Fuzzy’ back around the squad. I haven’t actually seen him for a few years so it’s going to be good to catch up.”

“He’s got a wealth of experience here in Pakistan, he knows the venues quite well so it’s going to be really helpful.”

In an exclusive interview with Geo Super, he said: “This is a really good thing for Pakistan and even for cricket. When I was talking to the people back home, the team members or from the support staff or the people in Cricket Australia, I would say, I requested them ‘let’s do it then for the game itself. Let’s do it for cricket.’ So, hopefully, this would be a revival of Test cricket in Pakistan.

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