LAHORE: A former director development at Pakistan Cricket Board’s National Cricket Academy, now revamped as the High Performance Centre, believes that the ill-planned restructuring of domestic cricket has destroyed the system.
During the tenure of Ehsan Mani as PCB chairman, the country’s cricket governing body dissolved the departmental cricket system as well as the 16 regions on instructions of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, shrinking it to just six provincial teams.
But the system could not be fully implemented during the last three years as the club scrutiny to induct them into the new system wasn’t carried out — neither during the time of Mani nor during Ramiz Raja’s current stint as PCB chief.
“This step disenfranchised thousands of clubs, many of whom were functioning prior to the creation of Pakistan,” Aizaz Syed, the former NCA director development, told Dawn on Friday. “Without developing any strategy to fit existing stakeholders into meaningful new activities, the board had to suspend grassroots cricket for years.
“In addition, over 16 regions, 100 districts, hundreds of volunteer office bearers, 3,000 clubs, dozens of departmental teams many of which own stadiums, and patrons’ teams ceased to exist. To make matters worse, no new pathways were created over an extended period for using existing capacity.
“While one of the primary goals of all sporting organisations is to increase system capacity or encourage its expansion, PCB induced large national capacity shrinkage due to poor management.”
Aizaz claimed the previous system had been profitable for the PCB.
“The previous domestic structure was able to generate cricketing activity worth nearly Rs2 billion per year, in addition to approximately Rs1.4 billion rupees that PCB spent on it every year,” he informed.
“More importantly, several thousand-man hours of work done by thousands of volunteers made domestic and grassroots cricket possible
every year. This system also provided employment to thousands of players and support staff. The failure of the new domestic cricket system can be judged by the fact that since the new board took over, most players who have made international debuts for Pakistan through domestic cricket are in their mid-30s.”
Aizaz added that the move to replicate the domestic system in Australia disregarded the country’s conditions.
“Prior to the dissolution of the board in 2018, private organizations, government departments, and passionate patrons were the main stakeholders in PCB. These silent warriors organized domestic cricket all over Pakistan. They developed stadiums, and hundreds of cricket grounds facilitated cricket clubs, and provided thousands of jobs to top players and support staff for decades,” he observed.
“After providing financial stability to PCB and rolling out massive new programmes, the change of command in the PCB brought Ehsan Mani in place in 2018. The new PCB management wanted to change everything that was being done for decades with complete disregard of local conditions, and without a proper plan to plug in the Australian system of cricket into Pakistan. Only the upper tier of the Australian system was put into place through a flawed management plan.”
Aizaz noted that Pakistan needed a new and logical system as quickly as possible in order to re-empower the real stakeholders of cricket from grassroots level.
“In rich countries like UK and Australia from where the system was copied, cricket clubs contract a substantial number of professional players every year, whereas, in a country like Pakistan, which ranks at 173 in per capita income, no cricket club can dream of hiring the services of professional cricketers,” he said.
“In the current Pakistani domestic cricket system, players are now instructed to play for a particular team under a specific financial contract, the terms of which the player cannot negotiate with the now sole employer, namely PCB.
“This mistake, combined with cyclical management errors, led to a rapid breakdown of the domestic cricket structure. Once departments, sponsors, teams, and owners of cricket grounds and stadiums became non-entities, the board lost an invaluable asset that was painstakingly developed over several decades.”
He said the PCB needed more profitable projects like Pakistan Super League, which became a successful brand in a few years because all the matters related to it were dealt on professional lines.
“The PSL was the biggest achievement of the PCB, after former Pakistan captain and PCB President A.H Kardar’s initiative of bringing in the departmental cricket, and provided the cricketers perfect platform to play cricket on professional lines,” he concluded.
