LAHORE: A 13-member governing council of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) has been formed, comprising seven members of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and one each from the six franchises of the league in order to move forward with mutual understanding.

In a meeting held at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) here on Wednesday it was also decided to form different committees of the council to discuss every aspect of the league in detail before giving their recommendations for the implementations.

It may be mentioned here that it was a long-standing demand of the franchises to the PCB to take them into confidence before taking any decision about the PSL. The demand has finally been accepted after three editions of the league have been successfully held.

This year, nearly a month before the start of the third PSL edition, as many as five out of six franchises had refused to pay their dues to the PCB over some unsorted issues which had caused a crisis-like situation. However, the PCB managed to control the situation but a need to form a forum for addressing the grouses of the franchsies was recognised and has now resulted in the formation of the council..

The council will be headed by PCB chairman Najam Sethi while the rest of PCB officials inducted in it include COO Subhan Ahmed, Chief Financial Officer Subhan Ahmad, Project Director PSL Naila Bhatti, who is also the marketing head of the PCB, Sohaib Sheikh, senior general manager marketing PCB, Salman Naseer, general manager legal PCB and Imran Ahmad Khan, head of player acquisition and management PSL.

From the franchises, Ali Naqvi (Islamabad United), Javed Afridi (Peshawar Zalmi), Salman Iqbal (Karachi Kings), Nadeem Omar (Quetta Gladiators), Gohar Ijaz (Multan Sultans) and Sameen Rana (Lahore Qalandars) will be the representatives at the council.

The PCB also issued a press release regarding the formation of the council which said: “All six team franchise owners congratulated PCB Chairman and Pakistan Cricket Board on the successful completion of the third edition of Pakistan Super League.

“The members of the Governing Council reviewed various aspects of PSL 3 in great detail. It was unanimously decided to form committees comprising representatives of PCB and PSL franchises in order to monitor and oversee mutually agreed matters relating to the PSL going forward.

“It was also decided that cricketing representatives of both sides would meet tomorrow to discuss matters related to the cricket affairs of both sides in order to complement each other’s game development programmes going forward,” it concluded.

In another development, it was learnt that all the franchises of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) have given their consent on not raising any objection over the holding of T-10 league, the first edition of which was held in UAE in December 2017.

The consent was given at a joint meeting of the owners of the franchises and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) held here on Wednesday, well informed sources said.

Earlier, the franchise owners were upset with the PCB for allowing the Pakistani players to feature in the T-10 league and for not raising any objection with the UAE cricketing authorities to stop the league since it had taken away a number of PSL sponsors working with the franchises.

Sources said the franchise owners had succeeded to convince the PCB to not allow the UAE authorities to hold any other league except the T-10 league in the period ranging from March to October every year.

Moreover, the idea to hold Pakistan’s own T-10 league was also discussed at the Wednesday meeting and the PCB allowed the franchises to also buy teams there whenever it is staged. However, the meeting failed to find out any window for holding the T-10 league due to other pressing cricketing activities of the national team.

Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2018