KARACHI, Dec 6: The Patron’s Trophy, arguably touted as the most competitive national first-class championship, starts from Monday under a cloud of controversy that was triggered by the Pakistan Cricket Board ad hoc committee’s decision to expand the event.

According to the original programme, eight departmental teams were supposed to participate along with Bangladesh ‘A’ in the competition from Dec 1 with the first-class segment preceded by a one-day tournament for the Patron’s Cup that starts on Sunday.

A couple of leading organizations were left contemplating a season out in the cold. For example, seven-time winners Habib Bank and National Bank, champions on five occasions in the past, had finished third in their respective pools and were unable to progress because the rules, laid down by the PCB, required only the top two teams from each pool to qualify.

Also earning unexpected reprieves are newcomers Defence Housing Authority (DHA) and Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL). The latter lost to Sui Gas in last season’s Kardar Trophy, a non-first-class tournament.

The PCB, already under fire for organizing the preposterous 27-team qualifying tournament during the holy month of Ramazan, had angered several top departments by asking them to qualify for the main tournaments.

Actually the qualifying phase was initiated by the PCB on the report of the World Cup Review Committee, headed by Col Naushad Ali, which recommended wholesome changes in the structure of the much maligned domestic cricket.

The committee, which had Aqib Javed and Sultan Rana as members, had also advised the PCB to promote the game at regional (district) level. It annoyed city-based cricket associations to the extent that several of them approached the apex courts to overturn the PCB’s plans, but to no avail.

However, the question that remains unanswered till now is: what was the point in staging the qualifiers in the first place? Just because a couple of reputed departments failed to make it to the main round, the PCB high command thought it would be a sensible idea to enlarge the tournament.

On top of it, the teams appearing in the qualifying stage were forced to pay a variable participation fee, ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 500,000. The qualifiers, in turn, are now required to pay up more just because they had made it to the main round! This is not all, the competing teams will also have to purchase the imported Kookaburra balls at a subsidized rate from the PCB with the request to return them after use.

One also questions the wisdom of staging two tournaments concurrently because the mental approach of a one-day game is far different from first-class cricket. According to the schedule, both the games will be played at a five-day stretch.

Another feature of the tournament is the inclusion, for the first time at first-class level, of ‘A’ team from Bangladesh. They begin their Pool ‘A’ campaign next Sunday against debutants DHA when the Pool ‘B’ matches also get under way in Rawalpindi and Peshawar.

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