Sunrisers Leeds, owned by the owners of IPL team Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), signed Pakistani spinner Abrar Ahmed in the Hundred auction 2026 on Thursday, March 12, and within hours their official Twitter (X) account was suspended.

Sun TV, the Indian media company that also owns SRH and the Sunrisers Eastern Cape (SA20), took over the ownership of the Northern Superchargers franchise from Yorkshire last year.

After the signing of Abrar Ahmed, the fans online flooded social media with furious reactions towards the franchises. This was followed by an unexpected suspension of the team's X account on early Friday.

Since then, Sunrisers Leeds' X profile page has been displaying the following message: "X suspends accounts which violate the X Rules."

Sunrisers Leeds splash INR 2.3 crore to sign Abrar Ahmed

Meanwhile, three other owners of the IPL teams won the bid for the Hundred teams last year. This move quickly led to speculation about Pakistani players' position going into the maiden auction. Before the auction, the tournament organizers and teams' officials confirmed that they will pick players solely based on "performance."

Abrar Ahmed was among ten players who entered the Hundred 2026 auction. As expected, IPL-linked teams showed no interest in buying Pakistani cricketers, but then the Sunrisers team picked up their paddle for Abrar Ahmed, a bowler despised by many Indian cricket fans for his past antics against the Men in Blues.

Trent Rockets also bid for Ahmed, but SRH's sister team won the battle with a massive bid of £190,000 (INR 2.3 crore). The team has faced a heavy backlash on social media, with a section of the fans calling out owners for signing Pakistani players despite India's strained political relations with their neighboring country.

Meanwhile, Sunrisers Leeds head coach Daniel Vettori explained the team's thinking behind signing Abrar Ahmed and also revealed that there was no internal discussion on avoiding a bid for the Pakistani players.

"Once we missed out on Adil Rashid, who was a priority early on, then we obviously jumped into the overseas spinner. There were four or five guys that we were looking at, and Abrar was one of them. Very pleased to get him," Vettori said.

Before Abrar, Birmingham Phoenix signed another Pakistani spinner, Usman Tariq, but the likes of Haris Rauf and Saim Ayub failed to find any bidders in the Hundred auction. James Coles emerged as the most expensive signing after London Spirit counted £390,000 for the 21-year-old, uncapped English all-rounder.

Also read: The Abrar Ahmed advantage: Why Sunrisers Leeds bet on Pakistan’s mystery spinner