'Pashto, Punjabi Urdu...': Captain Zeeshan Maqsood Shows How Culturally Diverse is Oman's T20 World Cup Squad

Oman captain Zeeshan Maqsood has highlighted the cultural diversity in the national team that is currently taking part in the 2024 ICC T20 World Cup.

In a chat with the International Cricket Council (ICC), Maqsood was asked, “How many languages does the Oman cricket team speak?”

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Oman have players tracing their origin from various Asian countries including India and Pakistan.

Even Maqsood, who started representing the Gulf nation in professional cricket in 2012, has his roots in Pakistan.

According to him, members of the current Oman squad are comfortable with four to five different languages.

Maqsood revealed that some of the Oman cricketers can speak Pashto, an Eastern Iranian language from the Indo-European family. It is the national language of Afghanistan and is also popular in Pakistan and Iran.

He looks also is quite comfortable with Pashto as he asked the interviewer “How are you?” in that language.

And then he translated the greeting into Punjabi, Urdu, English and Arabic – the national language of Oman.

Maqsood is one of the veteran members of the current Oman team. He has previously been part of the T20 World Cups in 2016 and 2021.

This time, Oman have been pooled in Group B alongside Australia, England, Scotland and Namibia. They ended up losing all four matches, failing to qualify to the next round.

Oman kicked off their campaign at the 2024 T20 World Cup with a match against Namibia. It was a close battle where both teams made 109 runs each forcing a Super Over.

Namibia had the last laugh and won the match by eleven runs.

Oman then suffered a 39-run defeat at the hands of Australia before losing to Scotland by seven wickets.

In their last Group B fixture against England, Oman suffered a massive batting collapse. They were bundled out for 47 runs in 13.2 overs. England lost two wickets during the chase but took only 19 balls to wrap up the game.

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