On Friday morning, the Board of Governors of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) held its second meeting of the year, which was 58th overall, through a videoconference chaired by Ehsan Mani.
The BoG approved an operating expenditure budget of Rs. 7.76 billion for the 2020-21 fiscal year, which is a 10 percent reduction from the 2019-20 budget as part of the PCB ‘s exercise of restructuring, rigorous financial management, and belt-tightening.
The PCB has allocated 71.2 percent of the total budget for cricket-related activities without sacrificing and raising any activities from the 2019-20 activities.
The allocated 71.2% cricket budget includes 25.2% for domestic cricket (events and players / match officials / player support staff contracts and High-Performance Center costs), 19.3% for international cricket (home / away series and player contracts), 5.5% for women’s cricket (home / away cricket and player contracts), 19.7% for PSL 2021 and 1.5% for Me.
While forecasting revenue shortfalls due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which left the fate of revenues from international events hanging in balance and may also affect the commercial program of PCB, the BoG agreed to continue investing in infrastructure development by approving Rs. 1.22 billion of capital expenditure budget, a reduction of about Rs. 800 million in 2019-20.
PCB Chief Executive Wasim Khan briefed the BoG on the 2020-21 season’s latest, 12-month merit-based domestic player contracts. The new contracts will come into effect from 1 August 2020.
The new monthly retainer structure is:
- Category A+ = 10 players, Rs. 150,000 per month
- Category A = 38 players, Rs. 85,000 per month
- Category B = 48 players, Rs. 75,000 per month
- Category C = 72 players, Rs. 65,000 per month
- Category D = 24 players, Rs. 40,000 per month
In addition to the revised monthly retainers, the players will also be paid match fees as per the following structure (in Rs.):
| 4-day1st XI FC | 3-day2nd XI | 50-over1st XI | 50-over2nd XI | T201st XI | T202nd XI | 3-day1st U19 | 50-overU19 | |
| Playing XI | 60,000 | 25,000 | 40,000 | 15,000 | 40,000 | 15,000 | 10,000 | 5,000 |
| Reserves | 24,000 | 10,000 | 16,000 | 6,000 | 16,000 | 6,000 | 4,000 | 2,000 |
According to the new monthly retainer structure, the PCB will again offer performance-based contracts to 192 leading domestic players (32 from each of the six Cricket Associations), but instead of paying a flat monthly Rs 50,000 retainer to all players, slab-wise payments will be made this season.
“Overall, as opposed to last year, we increased our investment in our domestic contract retainers by 46 percent. We have also developed a category-based retainer system that will reward and incentivize the high-performance cricketers better, “said Wasim Khan.
“The PCB is hopeful that this model will further enhance competition among players, which in effect will lead to our domestic cricket ‘s overall uplift,” he added.
