PCB to encourage school tournaments to identify talent

KARACHI: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Friday said that under the new domestic cricket set-up, the Board would encourage the city associations to organise school tournaments on a regular basis to identify talent at a young age.

With clubs and city-based teams always on the hunt, the players would get many opportunities to prove their mettle, the PCB said.

“Each of the six Cricket Associations will hold inter-city tournaments every year and the six winners will feature in National City championships, organised by the PCB. Each association will field an Under-19 team in the one-day and three-day tournaments. The 2019 National Under-19 Tournament (three-day and one-day) will run from October 1 to November 21.

“Apart from this, the Cricket Associations, with the assistance of the City Cricket Associations, will organise trials for the under-13 and under-16 players for the identification of talent as has been the case before,” it added.

From September 12-20, under the Under-13 Catch em’ Young and Under-16 PCB-Pepsi Cricket Stars programmes, the PCB would conduct trials for the two age-groups across 82 cities, the Board said.

“The top performers from these trials will then be sent to six high performance programmes – one each in every Cricket Association – where they will be groomed and nurtured according to international practices at state-of-the-art facilities.

“The average age of a Pakistani first-class cricketer in the previous cricketing season was 27.7 years, the second highest among the top-Test playing nations and way above the average age of the 15-player Pakistan contingent that participated in the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup in England and Wales earlier this year,” the Board pointed out.

“The new structure, this way, along with enlarging the pool of cricketers will also infuse young cricketers in the system,” it appended. The PCB chairman Ehsan Mani said that one of his visions was to encourage more and more youngsters to focus on cricket and take up the game. “Sports play a very important role in the development of youngsters and, with the new structure, we want to encourage youngsters to consider cricket as a serious career-option,” Mani said.

“We have taken cricket to every doorstep. With the successful rolling out of this structure, I am hopeful that we will achieve this very aim. Like any new initiative this will require time, adjustments and tweaking to ensure that it is sustainable in the longer run,” the chairman said.