LAHORE: Only 16 domestic cricketers could benefit from the Pakistan Cricket Board’s welfare scheme, which was introduced to help them out financially due to the Covid-19.

Though the PCB has the plan to disburse the amount to qualified domestic cricketers, scorers, umpires and referees — totalling above 90 — before the Eid-ul-Fitr, the process of collecting the applications ended on May 19 instead of the May 16 deadline, it could not be possible to release the amount as the bank holidays also started from May 23.

“It was not possible to disburse the amount before Eid, in three days time, but now they would get it in five working days after the end of the Eid’s holidays,” a PCB spokesman said.

The criteria for the domestic players, who could qualify for the scheme, other than the central contracted players of the domestic six teams, is that a player must have played in 2018-19 domestic season besides having played 15 first-class matches since 2014-15 season.

Apart from the cricketers, 94 groundsmen also applied for the funds. Among the groundsmen, those are also included, who have been withdrawing some portion of their salaries from the PCB, while working on the defunct 16 regional associations’ strength, but later they were denied the monthly’s contribution last year, as the PCB had finished the regional’s set up. Besides cricketers and groundstaff, 31 scorers, 20 umpires and one match referee also qualified for the scheme.

“All the qualifiers will get their dues within five working days after the end of the Eid-ul-Fitr holidays,” the spokesman said.

It may be mentioned that the 15 first-class cricketers will get Rs25,000. umpires and referee Rs 15,000 and scorers and groundstaff Rs10,000 each.

The PCB spokesman said that all who had qualified for the scheme had already been informed that they would get the funds after the Eid.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2020