PCB’s thinking shows format playing a central role in deciding contracts

The Pakistan board ignored Younis Khan’s importance to the Test format because he does not play in the shorter formats while deciding on his contract category. Jekesa Njikizana / AFP

On the surface it looks like a typical Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) skirmish. Last week the PCB released its annual list of centrally contracted players with 31 players awarded one of four types of annual contracts.

As has become ritual since the contracts system was put in place more than 10 years ago, a couple of decisions cannot help but reveal the board’s inherent dysfunction.

Truth is, that is the case in good years. In bad ones there are many more.

Over the years the PCB has pretended to be a modern, professional organisation – the introduction of central contracts itself was a sign of change.

But each year, when the list comes out, this charade stands revealed, each inexplicable decision a toll on players for the sin of being employed by the PCB.

This year the decision that has heads shaking was Younis Khan being demoted to the “B” category. Instantly, it felt harsh. Younis is Pakistan’s most senior batsman and their best. He is a World Cup-winning captain and arguably among the toughest batting nuts anywhere.

A senior board official cited a situation long ago when the Australian cricket authority apparently demoted Shane Warne’s contract status when he chose not to play Twenty20.

The adopted logic was that Younis had stopped playing Twenty20 and, as he was not in Pakistan’s ODI plans either, he had become a single-format player. The top category was thought to be reserved for only the captain and all-format players. (In practise it is not.)

Younis refused to sign, a few ex-players and fans criticised the decision and less than a week later the board had returned him to category “A”.

A new criteria had been developed the details of which are irrelevant because it is not likely to ever be used again.

But there is a belief that the decision to downgrade Younis was not PCB-centric so much as part of a broader and unavoidable trend. The original demotion brought into focus the comparative worth of the three formats in cricket.

By not playing the two limited-overs formats, Younis’s Test value – and seniority – was not thought to be worth the same as, say, Shahid Afridi, who is in the A category but does not play Tests.

Younis was thought to be worth less than Mohammad Hafeez, who is on the periphery of the Test side and has never convinced in the format. He was thought to be worth about the same as Umar Akmal and Ahmed Shehzad, young limited-overs stars but not yet guaranteed in the Test side.

In the battle to keep Test matches as the game’s pinnacle, which aficionados are so obsessed with, this question is at the front. How much boards pay Test-only players is one of the ways in which they show how much they value Test cricket.

It is a situation more and more boards will confront as some formats prove more lucrative than others in different markets.

Despite the Younis promotion, Pakistan are no closer to finding an answer. Azhar Ali, who has been such an unheralded and critical addition to the Test XI over the past four years but is not part of limited-overs plans, has been given only a “C” category contract.

It is the newest format of the game, ultimately, that will have the greatest say on central contracts in some markets.

One of the continuing effects of Twenty20 has been to loosen the grip on players that board contracts had always ensured.

It is possible that, one day, the Indian Premier League, the Big Bash, the Champions League Twenty20 or the Caribbean Premier League, will prove a catalyst for central contracts to disappear.

Contracts were prized as they offered security and stability for professional players but there are more options now for players to pick and choose where they play, primarily in Twenty20 leagues, for whoever rewards them best, at whatever time of the year – if they are good enough.

The Younis contract situation may one day become irrelevant.

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