The loud squawking after the flare-up between the Pakistan Cricket Board and Multan Sultans owner Ali Tareen has money at the bottom. Mr Tareen would not be so hard on the PCB had he not been facing a franchise renewal which would cost him much, much more for the privilege of owning a franchise in the Pakistan Super League, the T20 tournament which has benefited the PCB monetarily in a number of ways. The PCB might well have not reacted so harshly to Mr Tareen’s criticisms if it had not wished to prevent Mr Tareen either spoiling the existing franchise owners, who also face fee hikes, or scaring away the new ones, two of whom would pick up the two new franchises to go on offer as the PSL expands both the number of teams and the venues.
This newspaper’s Profit magazine contains a detailed report on the funding benefits of the PSL, tracing how it has now become the mainstay of the PCB’s income. Further, because it served to show how overseas players could play safely in Pakistan, and how Pakistani venues could host matches without incident, it helped pave the way for the return of international cricket to the country. Mr Tareen seems disgruntled because though the PCB is not losing, especially because of its share of ICC tournaments its has taken part in, because of the PSL example, Mr Tareen is losing heavily. He stands to lose even more, and ends up still not owning the Multan Sultan franchise. The PCB is disqualifying him from participating in the franchise auction, which means he is likely to lose the frnachise. A fairly nasty legal battle can be expected, which will certainly not help the PCB sell its new franchises.
The main problem seems to be that the franchises are not sold outright to the owners, who are basically just tenants who have rented the franchise from the PCB. This means that franchises cannot be converted into public companies, and shares sold in them. This will lead to problems, as the game faces new challenges. While the 2020format has been wildly successful, allowing the spread of the game to places it never reached before, there is an experiment with a two-innings format, with Each innings restricted to 20 overs, which squeezes a Test into one day. That may set up a new round of problems that might make the current tussle seem like a T20 match.
