Jason Roy broke five bats in dressing room during PSL 5: Nadeem Omar

Quetta Gladiators’ owner Nadeem Omar has revealed that England opener Jason Roy broke five bats in the dressing room, during the now-suspended fifth edition of Pakistan Super League (PSL).

Roy scored 233 runs in eight innings at an average of 33.28 and strike rate of 120.1 during PSL 5 for his franchise. Despite being the team’s second highest run-scorer during the league, Roy’s performances left a lot to be desired.

“Very few people know that Roy broke all his bats, five to be exact, in the dressing room [in frustration]. We arranged new bats for him in Rawalpindi through the help of Ahmed Shehzad,” said Omar in a YouTube video.

Later, Roy also shared his version of the story in a tweet on social media website Twitter.  

That’s not correct. 3 bats broke due to the dry weather and using them in the nets too much. I only took 3 or 4 bats over with me to Pakistan.

— Jason Roy (@JasonRoy20) April 25, 2020

Omar also spoke about the reasons behind lack of free-flowing opening partnerships for the Gladiators during the last season.  

“Jason Roy kept on saying that he was not able to middle the ball while batting. Also I think he and Shane Watson were not able to complement each other at the top of the order because Watson prefers the big shots while Roy likes to run quickly between the wickets in order to score runs,” he said. 

“We also asked both of them to try batting lower down the order but they refused while citing valid reasons,” he added. 

Gladiators, who were the defending champions, finished at the fifth position of the points table, during PSL 5, with nine points from 10 games. They could not qualify for the playoffs stage of the event due to inferior net run rate as compared to Peshawar Zalmi — who also had nine points.