DUBAI, UAE – Pak­istan all-rounder Shadab Khan has been ap­point­ed cap­tain of the Desert Vipers for this month’s Exxon­Mo­bil Guyana Glob­al Su­per League, re­plac­ing the in­jured Chris Green.

The 27-year-old will lead the side in the five-team tour­na­ment start­ing Ju­ly 23 at Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um, fea­tur­ing the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors, San Fran­cis­co Uni­corns, La­hore Qa­lan­dars and Perth Scorchers.

Shadab ex­pressed mixed emo­tions about the role, speak­ing on the Vipers Voic­es pod­cast. “I’m very sad for Chris (Green) be­cause he’s a very good friend. While I am hap­py to get the op­por­tu­ni­ty, I am al­so sad for my friend.”

The leg-spin­ner brings ex­ten­sive lead­er­ship ex­pe­ri­ence, hav­ing cap­tained Is­lam­abad Unit­ed in the PSL for sev­en sea­sons, in­clud­ing their 2024 ti­tle-win­ning cam­paign, where he was named play­er of the tour­na­ment.

The new cap­tain made no bones about how he plans to lead, say­ing he prefers one-on-one con­ver­sa­tions with play­ers rather than group chats, which he says is most ef­fec­tive for his lead­er­ship style.

“When you give play­ers clar­i­ty as in­di­vid­u­als, that helps to build their con­fi­dence.”

Shadab cit­ed Ricky Ponting as his lead­er­ship in­spi­ra­tion and looks for­ward to re­unit­ing with Vipers head coach Azhar Mah­mood, whom he de­scribes as a “big broth­er” fig­ure who guid­ed his Pak­istan ca­reer.

Cur­rent­ly play­ing in Eng­land’s T20 Blast, fill­ing the spot va­cat­ed by Green, Shadab sees the tour­na­ment as ide­al prepa­ra­tion for the GSL.

“You have to be spot on from the very first ball,” he not­ed. Af­ter shoul­der surgery in Ju­ly 2025, Shadab made a strong PSL re­turn, scor­ing 173 runs and tak­ing 17 wick­ets. He said the in­jury changed his per­spec­tive.

“I feel it is a bonus play­ing crick­et now… I am see­ing the game dif­fer­ent­ly.” Shadab al­so aims to set­tle “un­fin­ished busi­ness” with the Vipers af­ter a dis­ap­point­ing 2024 ILT20 cam­paign. “Hope­ful­ly, now in the GSL, I can show the Vipers fans how good I am,” he said.

The all-rounder has played 6 Tests, 73 ODIs and 124 T20Is for Pak­istan, tak­ing over 200 in­ter­na­tion­al wick­ets.

CMC