The cashed up unofficial cricket league ICL continues to feast on Pakistan’s talent stock, eight more players, Sami, Naved-ul-Hasan, Mushtaq Ahmed, Humayun Farhat, Shahid Nazir, Hasan Raza, Imran Nazir and Riaz Afridi have signed lucrative contracts with ICL and the eminent life ban on Shoaib Akhter might also compel him to sign a deal in the next few days.
Besides these eight players six other players, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Imran Farhat, Taufeeq Umar, Shabbir Ahmed, Abdul Razzaq and Azhar Mahmood have already joined ICL. Off spinner Arshad Khan is also rumoured to have signed a contract with ICL he may join the league from next season.
The situation is nothing short of a major crisis for PCB as Pakistan’s bench strength and its domestic pool of players is fast depleting as almost all the second string players who do not get selected in the National team are opting for ICL. Although these players were mostly test discards and with the exception of Sami, Imran farhat, Imran Nazir and Shabbir Ahmed none of these players had any realistic chance of representing Pakistan in any form of the game, but these are all senior and experienced players and if they continue to play domestic cricket youngsters can learn a lot from these players. Also the quality of Pakistan’s domestic competitions will further deteriorate as most of the players who have any international experience will be either playing ICL or its official clone IPL.
But what worry’s me the most is the trend any player who is not being selected in the National team is willing to go on auction, and ICC and PCB are in no mood to soften their stand to ban those players who opt for ICL, this migration will continue if unchecked or not contained and Pakistan will be most affected as we have one of the largest pool of talented players who have no problem regarding adjusting in India because of similarities in language and culture. Financial incentives will also play a major role as what these players make domestically is chump change in comparison to what they would be receiving from ICL.
ICL’s official clone IPL is creating even bigger problems, if ICL is recruiting second string players from all over the world IPL is targeting the best and is getting them with far more ease as it is officially recognized. IPL has a 44 day schedule and I can’t believe that it will not affect the domestic setup of other countries, already we have seen that the Australian players are more keen to play IPL’s inaugural game on April 18th and make money rather than make an official tour to Pakistan, the incentives are so lucrative that their player’s union boss Paul Marsh even threatened that the players are ready to leave International cricket if a stand alone slot for IPL is not carved out where no International matches are being played.
The situation is already creating tremors in England where English club owners know that there is no way that they will be able to attract foreign players any more. If a separate window is not carved out for IPL it will trigger a lot of premature retirements in International cricket as the temptation to get rich is too big.
There is a clause in IPL’s agreement that no player will be able to play the tournament before two years from his date of retirement a clause which might get challenged in the court.
The threat of ICL and IPL are real, and by imposing bans on players the situation will remain unsolved, ICC should recognize ICL and try to regulate them. In fact both the bodies should be regulated they should not be able to recruit a player if a NOC is not granted by the respective board of the player and a quota for each league per country should be announced so that the domestic tournaments of these countries should not get affected.
Recent Comments