LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has claimed that its proposed domestic structure of the game, not to feature departmental teams, will not end players’ jobs, rather it will create new employment.

In a rejoinder to a story published on Wednesday in Dawn , in which the departmental officials expressed their concern over the revamp plan, currently under consideration, the PCB stated: “The plan to revamp the domestic system will not “lead to hundreds of cricketers being rendered unemployed” due to elimination of the departmental teams, as has been alleged in the said report.

“Instead, departments and cricketers are expected to get a bigger role in managing affairs of the regional teams. This is an attempt to give these departments greater power, authority and money. It would lead to the creation of many new jobs for the country’s best cricketers.”

The PCB spokesman also pointed out that nowhere in the world was domestic cricket based on departmental cricket, rather it is based on regions.

The proposed structure will make the domestic cricket more autonomous and democratic; the departments will be more empowered as both organisers and sponsors regionally while regions will become more efficient as a result.

The PCB also disclosed that it would go through dialogue with the stakeholders before implementing the new cricket structure.

“It is a measure of PCB sense of responsibility that it will invite former Test captains to review its proposed plan, followed by interactions with stakeholder departments and regions before finalising any plan to revamp domestic cricket,” the Board rejoinder concluded.

However, when reminded by no means it was possible that jobs would be created as several departments had many players as their employees would face the axe (in the new structure), a PCB spokesman said: “We have a very effective plan to create jobs, it will happen and the PCB has made this claim on record by giving this statement [regarding the revamp plan].”

It may be mentioned here that according to the revamp plan the departments, currently affiliated with the PCB, will not be allowed to field their own team. Instead, they will be asked to sponsor a region.

However, an official of one of the said departments said a good number of affiliated departments had no provision in their rules to sponsor any region.

He said among them were departments like Wapda, SNGPL, KRL and SBP.

He added only NBP, HBL, UBL and some other could sponsor some sporting activities. The official however added that the number of such departments was not sufficient to accommodate all the regions, which will come down to 12 from the current 14, after implementation of the revamp plan.