Born at the turn of the century in Sargodha, Awais Zafar came up through the PCB’s age-group structure, playing for Faisalabad U16 and U19 and Sargodha U19. On this journey, Awais Zafar’s talent shone above his compatriots’. This journey coincided with the rise of a cricketing giant across the border in India, Virat Kohli and became the reason behind the nickname, Awais Kohli.
As he gears up for what could be his maiden Test series, let’s dive in to see what prompted his selection altogether.
Departmental Hierarchy
Except from 2019 to 2023, most of the time in Pakistan’s recent domestic cricket, the departmental structure either blended with the regional one or ran side-by-side. In that setup, there were always teams that were a class apart from the others. And whatever happened, everyone was certain they would be one of the top teams. Habib Bank Limited (HBL) had a stature like this with players like Younis Khan, Imran Farhat, Shahid Afridi, Abdur Rehman, Danish Kaneria, among others.
Similarly, Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) have had that stature since the late 2000s, with the emergence of Misbah-ul-Haq, Mohammad Hafeez, along with others like Mohammad Rizwan and Umar Akmal. Even now, SNGPL are known as the title contender in any domestic tournament. In their last First-Class match, their playing XI had Abid Ali, Azan Awais, Omair Bin Yousuf, Mohammad Rizwan, and Aamer Jamal. At least 4 players from that playing XI have played Test cricket for Pakistan, and a couple of others, like Abdul Samad and Shahnawaz Dahani, have represented the side in white-ball formats.
Among all these names, there were only two players who had not earned the green star on the big stage, Shahzad Gul and Awais Zafar, both of them from Sargodha. Even though this was Shahzad’s first and only departmental team, which he has been representing for the last few years, this was Awais Zafar’s first tournament with the mighty SNGPL.
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He had climbed the departmental ladder of Pakistan’s domestic structure, starting with the Higher Education Commission, at the bottom of the ladder, to Khan Research Labs (KRL), a mid-tier department, to donning the mighty blue of SNGPL.
Awais played a season each for HEC and KRL, scoring 500+ runs for each of them with averages of 45.9 and 74.3, and 2 centuries apiece, which led to him being named in the SNGPL squad for 2025/26.
Results in the SNGPL squad were not the same and expectedly so, with Abdul Samad carrying on with regional form on his side, Mohammad Rizwan’s seniority, along with Mubasir Khan’s proven ability to score runs at lower-middle-order positions, pushing Awais to number 7 for most of the season. He only played 4 innings in the top 6, which included a rearguard 38 off 84, a blitzing 23 off 20 and a classic red-ball 98 off 177 deliveries.
That 98 was one of his two 50+ scores for SNGPL, with the other one being a 51 off 80 deliveries, while batting at number 7. In the same number of innings, Awais had crossed the 500-run milestone for HEC and KRL, batting at number 7, scoring only 289 runs with zero centuries.
Which batting position does Awais Zafar normally bat at?
The positions at which Awais has scored the most runs are number 6, 4 and 5, in that order. His lowest average among these positions is at 5, which is 39.3, with a century and a couple of half-centuries.
However, he has batted the most at number 6 and scored 800 runs in 18 innings at an average of 50 with 2 hundreds and 4 fifties to his name.
For all his brilliance, Awais wasn’t always the genius he is today. In his initial seasons for Faisalabad and the Higher Education Commission, Awais started as a top-order player, but his opening performance was middling at best; it improved significantly when he moved to number 4 for HEC.
Awais only played one innings outside of the top four for HEC, with 11 innings at number four, where he grabbed the opportunity with both hands and scored 477 runs at an average of 47.7. His tally includes a couple of centuries, one of which is his career-best score, an unbeaten 178.
Seeing this, next season Faisalabad further spread his batting opportunities across different positions, which saw Awais score his only century in the top 3, a 145-run knock against Islamabad as an opener in the third innings. A couple of matches before that, Awais had scored a fourth innings 61 while batting at number 5 against Abbottabad.
Speaking about the fourth innings, Awais has certainly enjoyed batting under the pressure of the chase on him. Three out of his five 50+ scores in the last Quaid-e-Azam Trophy came as he batted under the gun in the fourth innings. Similarly, while playing for KRL in the President’s Trophy, three out of his four 50+ scores were in the fourth innings.
Consistency is the Key
With the shiny-new-toy syndrome in Pakistan Cricket, everyone wants to add every season’s top run-scorer or top wicket-taker to the team. However, players who make it to the Test squad just based on one season hardly stay in the side for longer periods. And before long find themselves back in the domestic circuit due to poor performance and inconsistency.
In Awais’s case, he is not that shiny toy, and his raw First-Class numbers might not seem that impressive as well. The problem, however, was that his sudden rise was not so high on the leaderboard that he caught everyone’s eye. He was someone who was consistently in the top 15 run-scorers in the last two seasons. The only players to score more than Awais in both seasons are Azan Awais and Sardar Hasan Raza. Awais averaged higher than Hasan Raza as well, while marginally lower than Azan Awais.
Another argument here is that both Azan and Hasan are openers. While only Awais is the middle-order batter. Rameez Aziz and Mohsin Riaz are a couple of middle-order batters who were above Awais in the 2024/25 season and scored marginally less than Awais in the last season and missed out on the Test call-up.
Conclusion
A lot of people are calling Awais’s selection wrong. However, looking at the complete picture, several players were either unfairly dropped or just missed out based on luck. In all these cases, Awais is not at fault; he has scored his runs across regional and departmental setups, across different positions.
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