Imran Khan rejects PCB delegation plea to reinstate branch cricket in Pakistan


Imran Khan, Pakistan’s Prime Minister and patron of the Pakistan Cricket Board, has rejected ccalls for reviving departmental cricket in the country. In a brief assembly at Khan’s residence, a delegation that included Misbah-ul-Haq, Azhar Ali and Mohammad Hafeez, made a tender to change the premier’s brain approximately the new constitution, which has already cost over 400 cricketers their jobs, but could make no headway with Khan insisting that the new regional mannequin was once “the correct way”.

The cricketers who met Khan cited the reduced earnings for players under the new mannequin, in addition to the reduced opportunities for younger cricketers to pick out up the game.

“The new constitution didn’t make any difference from its first year (2019) to the second one (2020), which has been affected by Covid-19 too,” one member of the delegation said. “The pipeline of cricketers coming into the system has been drying up. We take into account that Imran Khan has a point approximately having competitive cricket in Pakistan, but you can’t execute this in one go, without giving a substitute for cricketers.”

Alongside the three cricketers, the delegation included PCB chairman Ehsan Mani, chief executive Wasim Khan, the COO Salman Naseer and Wasim Akram, in his capacity as a PCB cricket committee member.

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Khan had been a strong advocate for a domestic constitution with only regional sides instead of departmental sides for much of his playing career too, wanting Pakistan to adopt a constitution very similar to Australia’s Shield cricket. Since fitting Prime Minister, a position that automatically makes him the patron of the PCB, Khan set approximately putting his ideas in place. He instructed Mani to restructure the domestic mannequin with six regional teams in the system, which will be the only feeder for the national team. The decision effectively ended the role that departmental cricket had since the 1970s, but it also saw 400 cricketers lose their livelihoods because they had held jobs with departments only by advantage of playing for those teams. The PCB offered contracts to only 192 cricketers, except for match officials. For lots of those contracts are much lower value than what departments were paying cricketers, where they continuously benefited from other perks.

ESPNcricinfo understands the assembly was once also marred by PCB officials contradicting players and not letting discussions glide smoothly. One of the most players told ESPNcricinfo that Khan asked for patience with the new mannequin, saying that Khan argued that such “transition” was once at all times going to be difficult, but that for the national side to benefit, there had to be competitive domestic cricket. No successful mannequin in other cricket playing countries, Khan said, has departments (or corporate teams) playing at the highest level in domestic cricket. Khan also argued that players’ development stopped once they got jobs with departments, because the security bred complacency.

The new constitution is meant to empower the six province associations to function from the grassroots level to the domestic level, and they’re going to be responsible for regulating club, city and regional cricket. But while sound on paper, it is not been easy to execute the new mannequin in practice. Clubs that were supposed to be registered under the new mannequin haven’t been, while players have played for the clubs for the past 18 months in one of those vacuum – with the old constitution gone and without the new constitution in place.

Domestic cricket in Pakistan has been played among departments and regions for just about 50 years, starting in the early 1970s, when Abdul Hafeez Kardar, Pakistan’s first Test captain and then PCB chairman, encouraged organisations like Habib Bank Limited, Sui Southern Gas Corporation, Water and Power Development Authority and others to supply employment opportunities for players. With the new mannequin, most departments have already suspended contracts they had with cricketers. Those who were permanent employees were asked to pick out desk jobs, effectively ending their cricketing aspirations. These were players hired chiefly for their cricketing skills, and provided their lack of qualifications for other jobs, they’ve had to pick out non-executive jobs with lesser pay.


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