LAHORE: The first meeting of Pakistan Cricket Board’s newly-formed task force on restructuring domestic game will be held here on Friday.

The focus of the task force meeting, it is believed, will be on excluding departmental teams while basing Pakistan’s domestic cricket structure on eight regions only.

Interestingly, the task force is being headed by retired Lt Gen Muzammil Hussain, who is also chairman of Wapda, one of the departments which have been featuring in domestic cricket competitions for the last many years.

It is learnt that the task force will consider different proposals on excluding the departments and on reducing the present 16 regions to eight.

“As per initial proposals, the number of the regions is being reduced to eight with eight departments being asked to sponsor one region each instead of fielding their own team,” sources said.

The new system is being named as ‘hybrid domestic season’.

According to initial proposals, sources add, both Sindh and Balochistan will have one team each while Punjab will be divided into at least four regions including Lahore, Multan, Bahawalpur and Sialkot. Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Azad Kashmir will be merged into one region while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will be one region.

As Prime Minister Imran Khan has been a vocal supporter of regional domestic cricket system having no role for department teams, at least eight government departments currently fielding their teams in domestic cricket will be required to sponsor one region. Among them are Wapda, NBP, KRL, ZTBL, SNGPL, SSGC, PTV and State Bank of Pakistan are the leading departments being run by the government.

It is feared, however, that if the proposed structure is established a good number of cricketers playing first-class cricket will lose their jobs in all the departments currently competing for the Quaid-i-Azam Trophy title.

Published in Dawn, December 14th, 2018