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On 9 October 2026, Sahibzada Farhan walked out at Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium as Pakistan’s newly appointed T20I captain. He made 89 off 53 balls, and Pakistan chased down 183 against Sri Lanka with four wickets in hand. Before this autumn’s Asian Games, he had never led the national side. For most of his career, he could barely get into it. Farhan spent years piling up domestic runs while selectors kept looking elsewhere, making his rise to the armband one of the more unlikely stories in Pakistan cricket’s recent history.
Born on 6 March 1996 in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Farhan learnt the game with a tape ball. His family moved to Peshawar in 2008, where he joined Peshawar Gymkhana Club and began as a fast bowler before batting took over. He made his first-class debut for Peshawar in October 2016.
The national call came early as he was picked for the 2018 tri-series in Zimbabwe at the age of 22. It did not go well. He was stumped off the second ball of his T20I debut. Then came a long wait.
Farhan never stopped scoring. The PCB named him domestic cricketer of the year in 2021, and he led the 2021-22 National T20 Cup with 447 runs. Two seasons later, he made 492 at a strike rate of 178.90. Still, the phone barely rang.
13 different top-order combinations tried by Pakistan between his two spells in the T20I side, and 10 different openers in two years. When he was recalled in 2024, he played two games in New Zealand at No. 5 and No. 7, though he is a top-order batter. By March 2025, his T20I average stood at 9.55 from nine innings.
“It’s difficult at the international level to switch from top to middle order,” Farhan said at the time.
The 2024-25 National T20 Cup changed the conversation. On 21 March 2025, he hit 162 not out off 72 balls for Peshawar against Quetta, with 14 fours and 11 sixes. It was the highest individual T20 score in Pakistan, surpassing Kamran Akmal’s 150 not out. He finished the tournament with 605 runs and three hundreds. He hit 40 sixes while no other batter managed more than 13 in that tournament. Even so, he went into PSL 10 without a franchise contract.
Wicketkeeper Rashid Latif argued that Farhan had been “the top performer in domestic T20 tournaments”. Comparing him with opener Hasan Nawaz, he added: “You can’t compare 2,000 runs with 200.”
Former pacer Tanvir Ahmed was blunter on his YouTube channel in April 2025: “When selectors can’t drop a player based on performance, they resort to questioning his attitude.” Islamabad United eventually picked him.
Farhan did not hide what he wanted. “My aim is not just to play a couple of matches and make a comeback,” he said.
“I want to make a permanent spot for myself and play for a long period.”
Not every note he received was unfair. Sahibzada Farhan told Geo Super in April 2026 that Iftikhar Ahmed once said to him, “You cannot be playing with a strike rate of 132 as an opener.” He admitted he did not like hearing it. But he accepted that he needed to push closer to 150 and worked on his power-hitting.
It paid off quickly. He scored 184 runs at a strike rate of almost 166 for Islamabad United in PSL 10. Pakistan recalled him in May 2025, and he made 74 against Bangladesh, his first T20I fifty, off 29 balls. At the Asia Cup in September, he scored 58 off 45 balls against India and 57 in the final, which Pakistan lost.
The 2026 ICC T20 World Cup made him a household name. Farhan scored 383 runs at an average of 76.60, passing Virat Kohli’s 319 from 2014 for the most runs in a single edition. He also became the first batter to score two centuries at the same tournament. Pakistan, though, failed to reach the knockout stage. The ICC named him its men’s Player of the Month for February, and he made his ODI debut against Bangladesh on March 11.
In June 2026, the PCB named Farhan captain for the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan. The squad was young and almost unrecognisable from the World Cup side, with Salman Ali Agha, Babar Azam, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Shadab Khan all left out and four players uncapped. Pakistan reached the final but lost to India by 19 runs on October 3. Farhan made 10 off 11 balls, while Hasan Nawaz scored 96 in a losing cause.
A few days later, the board made him T20I captain, replacing Salman Ali Agha. Reports did not cite an official reason. Babar was left out of the T20I squad, and Mohammad Rizwan, who is under investigation by Pakistan’s National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency, was not picked either.
Farhan sounded surprised himself. “I had never envisioned myself as a captain,” he said on 9 October, crediting his parents’ prayers.
Ahead of the Sri Lanka series, he added: “I know how to lead the side and I will not take pressure.”
He also called Babar and Rizwan excellent players who could return at any time.
His own philosophy on selection is simple. “Senior or junior does not matter,” he said in September. “The players who perform are the ones who make the team.”
There is a certain irony in that line. For years, Farhan was the one who performed and still waited. Now he picks the tone for a rebuilt side, and in his first full series as captain against Sri Lanka, he scored 238 runs at an average of 79.33 and a strike rate of 165.27 and Pakistan won the series 2-1. The strike rate, the 2018 debut and the lost years are behind him. What he does with the armband is the story from here.
Iqra Afroz is a sports content writer at SportsManch with a growing passion for cricket and contemporary sports media. She specialises in news writing and digital content, with a focus on delivering concise, accurate and reader-friendly stories. With a keen eye for detail, Iqra aims to provide informative and engaging sports coverage while continuing to develop her voice as a modern sports journalist.
