Thursday 26 / December / 2024
Lahore: Pakistan’s players are set to receive “historic” increases in their new central contracts, even as negotiations with Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on their participation in overseas T20 leagues continue, ESPNcricinfo reported on Saturday.
Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan and Shaheen Shah Afridi, in the top category of contracts, could be in line to earn as much as PKR 4.5 million (US$ 15,900 approx) a month as a retainer, four times as much as was on offer to top players in last year’s contracts.
The new contracts are likely to do away with last year’s format where red- and white-ball players were split, and return to previous years with four different categories of players. Babar, Rizwan and Afridi, as captain and cross-format stars, will be in category A.
Category B players are in line to receive in the region of PKR 3 million (US$ 10,600 approx), while those in category C and D will get between PKR 0.75-1.5 million (US$ 2650-5300 approx). The retainer values, if signed off on, represent the biggest increase in years, as part of an overall offering that was, according to officials, “historic”.
The hike is offset somewhat by the sharp depreciation of the Pakistan rupee in the last year, as well as an economy in which inflation has been spiralling out of control. But even accounting for that, the retainer increase is more than double, at least across the top category.
It also comes a year before the ICC’s new revenue distribution model kicks in, in which the PCB’s annual earnings of PKR 9.6 billion approx (US$ 34 million) are more than double what they were over the last ICC rights cycle.
That will make a significant difference for players who have been among the lowest paid internationally, a position exacerbated by often restrictive policies around playing in foreign T20 leagues. Pakistan’s players are not allowed to play in the IPL and their participation in other leagues has been subject traditionally to changing policies each time a new administration comes in.
