PCB, Cricket Australia agree to avoid PSL, BBL clash

LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and Cricket Australia have reached an understanding on various matters, including teams exchange programme and the schedules of the PSL and the BBL so that they do not overlap.

However, a formal agreement is yet to be signed. The crux of the recent meetings of the PCB and Cricket Australia were elaborated by both the PCB Management Committee chairman Zaka Ashraf and Chief Operating Officer Salman Naseer at a news conference here on Wednesday.

“The FTP is filled with cricket. There are various issues. Here in winter cricket cannot be held and in Australia too in winter cricket cannot be held and we also talk to other nations too on such issues on regular basis,” the PCB COO Salman Naseer said.

“We are thankful to Cricket Australia as we had good interaction with them over the past few months and we were aiming to finalise such matters on the recent tour which we were earlier discussing,” said Salman.

“There are so many leagues; they clash with each other. It was important in our partnership that both PSL and BBL do not clash in future. We reached a principal understanding that we will back each other to ensure that BBL and PSL do not clash with each other,” he said.

“We also talked on players’ availability as due to leagues players also have now plenty of options. There are so much burden, workload management and injuries, so we talked about how to ensure the availability of better pool of players for each other and to facilitate each other in NOCs also,” he said.

“We also talked on development of cricket so as to overcome the weaknesses which every Board has and how to strengthen each other by working jointly. We thought to regularise the tours of men’s under-19, Shaheens and women’s teams. We talked about how we can manage additional tours of these three teams and how to make them an annual feature so that both nations could get exposure in different conditions,” Salman said.

“We also mulled an option whether we can add another nation in the process so that a trilateral type of arrangement could be made. And on this matter our discussions are in process,” he said.

“We talked on training and development and curators,” he said. “And they said that they will run training programmes with us and they will upgrade our groundsmen and curators. So these three to four understandings have been reached and its details are yet to fleshed out and agreement will also be signed at a subsequent stage,” Salman said.

Zaka said on the occasion the two boards had reached an understanding and in the first week of next month Cricket Australia would approve it and after approval a formal agreement would be signed. “It will be done this year,” Zaka said.

“Cricket Australia also told us to send our curators who will be trained. We are weak in pitches preparation,” he said. Zaka said that they are doing this to ensure Pakistan players do not face much trouble in Australian conditions in future.

He said that the PCB is also working on infrastructure development and wants to see more venues under its patronage so that plenty of kids could play cricket and more talent could be hunted for national duty in future.

“I am thankful to the Army Chief who took a good initiative as he has said that in defence societies across the country places should be given to the PCB so that venues could be established. We are also in talks with the KP government and if KP government gives us Arbab Niaz Stadium and Hayatabad Cricket Stadium we desire to also hold an inaugural game of the PSL there,” Zaka said.

“We also plan to establish a stadium in Islamabad if we get land at the defence society and we are set to get land in Bahawalpur and Gujranwala. Punjab government also wants us to take stadiums in Faisalabad, Sialkot and Sheikhupura,” he said.