Punjab Kings In Trouble!! Star All-rounder’s Arrival Delayed Before IPL 2025

The Punjab Kings received a huge blow before the 2025 season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), as the star all-rounder Azmatullah Omarzai’s arrival was delayed due to personal reasons, as the reports have claimed.

Most of the Players for the franchise have arrived on March 17, while the Afghanistan all-rounder will touch base on March 21. The 2014 runners-up of the event have already started their training at the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association Stadium in Dharamshala.

Punjab Kings to miss Azmatullah Omarzai for first two games

Head coach Ricky Ponting and captain Shreyas Iyer are monitoring the progress of the players as the shining light of the last season, Shashank Singh, joined the side for the first training session.

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India Today has reported that the foreign players of the Punjab Kings have started to arrive from Monday, but Omarzai, who has been in incredible form for the last one and a half years, will join the squad only four days before their opening game of the tournament.

Recently, Omarzai became the very first Afghanistan player to win the ICC ODI Player of the Year award. In three group-stage clashes of the Champions Trophy 2025, the right-handed batter has clubbed 126 runs in three innings at an average of 42 and a strike rate of 104.13, shouldering on one half-century at the best score of 67.

He also picked up seven wickets in the event, including the five-wicket haul against England at an average of 20 and a strike rate of just below 18. Despite all of this remarkable performance, Punjab Kings may not use Omarzai in the opening playing eleven.

Punjab Kings sweats over best-balanced side for IPL 2025

Punjab Kings went into the mega auction with the biggest purse, as they made Shreyas Iyer the second most highly paid player in the history of the tournament for a price of INR 26.50 crore. Prabhsimran Singh, who will also keep wickets, can open the innings with Josh Inglis.

Marcus Stoinis can bat at number three, followed by captain Shreyas Iyer, who won last season’s IPL with the Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL 2024. Undoubtedly, Glenn Maxwell will bat at number five, while the side could also use Musheer Khan’s big shots in the death overs.

Marco Jansen’s left-arm swing and the power in the lower order will be valuable for the Punjab Kings, who may go into the pace bowling department with Arshdeep Singh, Yash Thakur, and Kuldeep Sen. Yuzvendra Chahal as their long premier spinner in the side.

One of the biggest issues for Punjab in all the previous editions is the failure to get their players together in a balanced squad. If Jansen doesn’t perform well in the first two seasons, then they can either use Azmatullah Omarzai in his position or even think of using Lockie Ferguson’s fiery spells of bowling.

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Xavier Bartlett is another young Australian bowler whom Ponting could use for the Punjab Kings as a surprise package.

Punjab Kings to open IPL 2025 campaign on Mach 25

The opening game for PBKS in the 2025 season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) will be on March 25 at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad against the Gujarat Titans. They will then fly to the Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Stadium on April 01 to face the Lucknow Super Giants.

Their first home game will be against the Rajasthan Royals on April 05 at the Yadavindra Singh Cricket Stadium in Chandigarh.