Balkh Zwanan vs Kandahar Warriors: APL 2026 head to head

APL head-to-head record

No match, no record, no scorecard — yet. Balkh Zwanan and Kandahar Warriors are both new franchises, and the 2026 season has not begun, so the head-to-head table reads played 0, won 0 on both sides. The first meeting will fill it in, and this page will carry the date, the ground and the result as soon as the ACB publishes them. What will not fill it in is 2018: the clubs from these cities eight years ago were different franchises, and their results stay with them.

The 2018 meetings: same cities, different clubs

The cities met twice in 2018, and Balkh's side won both. On 7 October, at Sharjah, Balkh Legends made 165 for 5 and held Kandahar Knights to 152 for 7 — a 13-run win. Eleven days later the Knights posted 141 for 9 and Legends chased it down with six wickets in hand, reaching 142 for 4 in 17.5 overs. The Knights finished the league in fifth place with four points and were already out before the knockouts; Balkh went on to lift the trophy, beating Kabul Zwanan by four wickets in the final on 21 October.

None of it counts here. Balkh Legends and Kandahar Knights were different clubs, and their results stay with them. What survives is a set of threads: Mohammad Nabi captained the 2018 champions and now plays for Kandahar; Qais Ahmad, player of the match in that final with 5 for 18, is back in Balkh colours in the Supplementary round; and Ibrahim Zadran, who now captains Balkh Zwanan, played his only 2018 match against the Legends — a semi-final for Nangarhar Leopards in which he made 0 off 5. The cities have history. The clubs start at 0–0.

Where the squads differ

Kandahar's hand at the top of the draft was the strongest in the league: the first pick in the Platinum round and the first pick in the Diamond round. That brought them Muhammad Amir, the first pick of the whole draft, and Mohammad Nabi, the captain of the 2018 champions, with England keeper-batter Joe Clarke alongside him in Diamond — all of it under Rashid Khan, the first bowler to 200 T20 international wickets.

Balkh's build was quieter but just as deliberate. The second pick of the Platinum round brought England all-rounder Moeen Ali, a Test hat-trick and two World Cup titles behind him; Diamond brought AM Ghazanfar and England's Luke Wood; and the first Gold pick was Gulbadin Naib, with UAE captain Muhammad Waseem and Sediqullah Atal in the same round. Five of Balkh's 19 are overseas players, the same count as Kandahar's five — but the mix differs: three of Balkh's five are English, with Waseem from the UAE and Colin Ackermann from the Netherlands, while Kandahar's five come from four different countries.

Key battles to watch

The captains set the tone. Ibrahim Zadran, the national opener and Afghanistan's T20I captain since March 2026, leads a side built around his own top-order game; Rashid Khan is the captain on the other side — a leg-spinner who was player of the series in 2018, when he led Kabul Zwanan. Zadran's only match in that 2018 season came against the Balkh side he now leads, so the first meeting of the two captains carries a small piece of unfinished business.

The bowling match-up is just as sharp. Moeen Ali's off-spin against a Kandahar middle order that includes Nabi and Joe Clarke is one to circle, and so is the other direction: Rashid's leg-spin against a Balkh top order led by Zadran. And then there is Qais Ahmad, who took 5 for 18 in the 2018 final and now returns to the Balkh side in the Supplementary round, bowling to the Kandahar side that includes Nabi — the captain he won the title under in 2018.

Coaches and mentors

The names in the dugouts are as big as the names on the field. Balkh's head coach is Mickey Arthur, with Tillakaratne Dilshan as mentor; Kandahar's dugout pairs Ravi Bopara with Irfan Pathan. Both groups were settled at the leaders' draft on 2 November, the day before the players were picked, and both survived the draft unchanged. The mentor list for the season also includes Mark Boucher with Nangarhar, Waqar Younis with Paktia and Nikhil Chopra with Akcel — every dugout has a name the crowd will know. The full leadership groups are in the mentors, coaches and captains announcement.

When do they play each other?

No date yet — the fixture list had not been published, so nobody knows when these two meet, or on which ground. The certainties are the frame around it: the season opens on 27 December 2026 in the UAE, the first ball is at 5:30 PM Afghanistan time (5:00 PM Dubai time), and the league has advertised 24 matches, twenty in the league stage and then the knockout. The date, the ground and the result will go on this page as soon as the ACB publishes them; until then the schedule and the points table are the places to watch.

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