PCB chief Ehsan Mani wants to draw foreign talent in domestic cricket


Ehsan Mani, the PCB chairman, believes inviting foreign players would make country’s domestic constitution more robust and competitive. While it’s still unclear whether a new ruling is being worked out, there are existing provisions to invite and register guest players with teams in the circuit.

While financial viability has been seen as a hindrance for teams in terms of signing out of the country talent, there have been a couple of exceptions over time. In 2011-12, 14 Afghanistan players featured for Afghan Cheetahs in the Faysal T20 Cup. Yamin Ahmadzai, the Afghanistan fast bowler, played five first-class games in Pakistan in 2016-17. Zimbabwe allrounder Sikandar Raza played in the National T20 Cup that same season.

“One of the most things we’re going to do with our first-class cricket is to encourage one or two out of the country players to come and play,” Mani said in a podcast produced by Bridget Osborne and James Willcocks at The Chiswick Calendar. “It is great for our players to be playing with the international players and that is the reason not going to happen overnight. We are working to take our first-class cricket to an entire different level and have it so competitive and so appealing for out of the country players that they need to be a part of it.”

Over the previous couple of years, the PCB have made hosting matches in Pakistan a precedence. In the final one year alone, they have got hosted a PSL season at four venues and two Test sides – Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. An MCC team also toured the country for the first time in 47 years.

“The big stumbling block used to be a commute advisory,” Mani explained of the challenges they faced earlier. “When you get schools and you get parents taking a look at that, they get nervous. Now that that’s been dealt with, it’s definitely something certainly that we’ve been we’ve been taking a look at seriously. Wasim Khan, our chief executive who used to be with Leicestershire county, has been already in discussion with a few counties to see if they’re going to come. I think people contact is what is so important.

“The MCC has been absolutely brilliant, very supportive of cricket in Pakistan, We’re also very lucky that we’ve got in Pakistan a high commissioner,Christian Turner, who used to be Theresa May’s national security adviser. So he understands the dynamics of the country. He understands Pakistan. And he is been very important, in reality, pivotal in getting the commute advisories to Pakistan changed. And that that has made a gigantic difference.”

Final year, Pakistan overhauled their domestic system and introduced a five-category grade-based system of monthly retainers, except for the match fees for all 192 players. They also abolished departmental format and brought in just the six provincial teams to streamline the constitution.

At the moment, there are over 700 staff who are directly employed or contracted by the PCB in different capacities. Then again, the domestic restructure has meant over 300 players are out of jobs. Mani felt the key used to be to decentralise power and multiply opportunities for each organization,

“As soon as the cricket associations are functional, a large number of these people would be delegated to those six cricket associations,” he said. “These are people like ground staff, curators, coaches, school trainers, people who go to school to give basic coaching. People like that are all on PCB payroll these days.

“And I’m pushing them down into the cricket associations with the lucid directions. There’s a large number of talk approximately people losing jobs. I’ve worked out that with the six cricket associations. They are playing cricket with 3000 clubs. We’re going to create more jobs for the former players. It’s going to take time.

It has started to happen overnight, but in a structured way, you’d need to be sure that each city has coaches for their schools. The city associations themselves will have coaches, coaching staff and everything from training young kids on how to behave on anti-corruption issues and understanding what the game of cricket is approximately.”


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