The PCB just priced its own players out of a ten-over league

The Abu Dhabi T10 held its player draft on September 30. Sixteen Pakistan players were picked by five of the six franchises. The league applied for their No-Objection Certificates soon after.

The Pakistan Cricket Board replied at the start of this week, with a price: USD 10,000 per NOC. The tournament starts on Saturday, November 7.

That is $160,000 across the 16 players, demanded with about four days to go. According to Cricinfo, some players offered to pay the fee from their own salaries if owners refused. Mediation has not worked, and teams are now looking for replacements.

This is not a few squad players. The defending champions, UAE Bulls, drafted six Pakistanis: Amir with the new ball, Shadab's leg-spin and Azam Khan's hitting. United Tigers built their batting around Fakhar Zaman, with Iftikhar and Faheem Ashraf to finish.

In ten-over cricket a franchise can carry two or three gaps. Five or six gaps four days before the opener means a different team. Overseas replacements available at this notice will mostly be the players nobody drafted in September.

Royal Desert Champions lose Naseem Shah, their only Pakistani pick.

The board has not commented publicly. A PCB source told PTI the fee is "fully justified" because demand for Pakistan players is high.

The older reasoning, which Cricinfo says still holds inside the board, is reciprocity. Leagues in the UAE and Nepal want Pakistan players, but Emirati and Nepali players are not in demand in the PSL. So the PCB charges those leagues instead.

That argument has some logic. A national board can reasonably expect something when other leagues use the players it develops. The problem is timing. A fee announced before the draft is a negotiating position. A fee announced five weeks after the draft, with days to go, leaves no time to negotiate, and both sides lose.

This matters more for Pakistan players than for most. They are shut out of the IPL. Franchises under IPL ownership in other leagues rarely sign them. Usman Tariq at Trinidad Knight Riders and Abu Dhabi Knight Riders, and Abrar Ahmed at Sunrisers Leeds, are rare exceptions.

That leaves the leagues the PCB is now charging: Nepal, Abu Dhabi and similar events. For players who live on domestic match fees and allowances, these are the leagues that pay the bills, which is what "lifeline" means.

The board's new contract policy, in theory, opens the door wider. Track C (T20 specialists) has no limit on overseas leagues, Track BC gets two, Track AB gets one, and red-ball Track A players get none. But nobody yet knows which player is in which track, because the contracts have not been announced. So the board has removed the cap on paper, and the NOC fee now limits players in practice.

Charging a fee is defensible. Charging it this late is not. The franchise official's word, "unprofessional", is fair. The PCB had the NOC applications for five weeks and raised the price only once the tournament was days away and franchises had little choice.

The cost falls on the players. Shadab, Naseem and Fakhar will be fine. Akif Javed, Ali Raza and Sufyan Moqeem, players for whom a T10 contract is serious income, lose a payday, and their next franchise may think twice before drafting a Pakistani again.

If the fee is policy, publish it before the next draft. Otherwise the board is turning its players into a risk that franchises will avoid.