Organisers of the Abu Dhabi T20 are hoping to invite champions Lahore Qalandars to defend their title in next season’s competition.

The Pakistan Super League franchise defeated South Africa’s Multiply Titans by 15 runs earlier this month to reign supreme in the inaugural tournament.

Although it’s been a fortnight since Qalandars lifted the title at Sheikh Zayed Stadium, Abu Dhabi Cricket’s acting CEO Matt Boucher said it ‘would be a nice touch to invite the champions back’.

“We haven’t made that decision. However, saying that, we anticipate it would involve the champions of year one. That would be a very nice touch to invite the champions back,” he said.

As well as Qalandars and Titans, the event attracted England’s Yorkshire Vikings, Big Bash League’s Hobart Hurricanes, Afghanistan’s Boost Defenders and New Zealand’s Auckland Aces.

That saw the likes of New Zealand’s batsman Colin Munro and ex-South African Albie Morkel in action during the three-day event.

There could have been more high-profile names with organisers naming Chris Gayle, Tymal Mills and Yasir Shah among the stars that would feature when it was launched in June.

But those players did not compete for their respective teams and Boucher said they will learn from this and ensure it does not happen again in the future.

“We need better confidence that these players will participate,” he said. “We saw a number of those player contracts and that gave us a lot of confidence to announce them. We didn’t rush into those announcements.

“Of the teams invited, we must do a much stronger job with the federations and other organisations of confirming those players for the teams. What we do not want to do is get involved in a bidding war. We don’t want to be announcing players who will not be participating – that is something that we do not want to do.”