Baseball United, the first-ever professional baseball league focused on the Middle East and Indian Subcontinent, announced today that Karachi, Pakistan was awarded the second franchise in league history.

The new franchise – also the first professional baseball team in Pakistan’s history – will compete against Baseball United’s recently announced team from India, the Mumbai Cobras.

The team will be called the Karachi Monarchs, with both the Karachi “K” and a bejeweled crown serving as its primary brand marks. The Monarchs name honors Karachi’s leadership role as Pakistan’s industrial, economic, and financial capital, while also paying homage to the city’s passionate love for baseball’s bat and ball counterpart: cricket. The Karachi Kings are one of the founding franchises of the Pakistan Super League, the nation’s premier cricket league.

Monarchs was also the moniker of one of the United States’ most successful professional baseball teams of all time. The Kansas City Monarchs is home to baseball legends and Hall of Famers such as Satchel Paige, Ernie Banks, and Jackie Robinson.

The Karachi Monarchs and Mumbai Cobras will compete against each other, as well as two other soon-to-be-named professional baseball franchises at Baseball United’s Dubai Showcase in November of this year.

The Monarchs and Cobras are projected to be the league’s biggest rivals, following in the footsteps of the Pakistani and Indian cricket teams that regularly draw hundreds of millions of viewers to their international matches.

The Karachi franchise announcement comes on the heels of Baseball United’s recently inked partnership with Pakistan Federation Baseball, the country’s governing body for the sport, and the most successful baseball federation within South Asia.

The agreement will enable the two organizations to jointly grow the game of baseball across Pakistan and within Pakistani communities worldwide.

Source: Pro Pakistani