A report in the ‘Jang’ newspaper stated that some Pakistani players accepted appearance fee as low as USD 2500 per person to attend a meet-and-greet function in Dallas on the sidelines of the T20 World Cup 2024. It also stated that another event, ‘A night with stars’, was called off because of differences in payments made to captain, Babar Azam and other players. All these revelations are going to be analysed during the postmortem of the league-stage exit, following losses to tournament debutants USA and arch-rivals India.
While the board has had four chairmen since December 2022, none of the senior management level officials have been moved or terminated.
“It is now becoming clear that if the players are today an indisciplined and careless lot, the blame for this falls on some of the senior management officials who have been patronising them in many ways including in the finalisation of the central contracts last year,” the source added.
Adding to the drama is the speculation that the team is a divided house with Babar and pacer spearhead Shaheen Shah Afridi at loggerheads over captaincy.
Pakistan’s shambolic T20 World Cup campaign in the USA is all set to trigger a churning in the country’s cricket board and lead to the formulation of a code of conduct for players, who are drawing criticism for taking their families along and making paid appearances at promotional events during the tournament.
A reliable source in the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) confirmed that Chairman Mohsin Naqvi is livid with the performance of some senior officials and held them responsible for the indiscipline prevailing in the team, which could not go beyond the league stage.
“You can expect the PCB to lose senior management level officials and also enforce some strict policies for the players in future,” the source said.
He said a policy decision on players not being allowed to have their families in ICC and other major events is also expected to be announced soon by the PCB as part of its clean-up operation.
“The fact that so many players not only took their wives and children to the World Cup even had their parents, brothers etc staying in the team hotel has left the chairman unhappy,” the source said.
He said when inquiries were made as to who gave permission for players to take all their family members on tour, it came to light that some senior officials in the board were behind this decision.
“Some of these officials are not professionals but fans of the players and have given them lot of concessions which eventually led to the World Cup debacle,” the source said.
He said the PCB chief had now asked for a performance assessment report from all senior management level officials as he is also unhappy with the progress of work for the ICC Champions Trophy scheduled early next year in Pakistan.
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