The Hundred Auction: ECB mentions cricketing rationale but inconsistencies cannot be ignored
Following reports that Indian owners are unlikely to consider Pakistani players in the upcoming auction of The Hundred, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has dashed off a letter to the franchises on the contentious issue. Vikram Banerjee, the CEO of The Hundred, has urged teams to pick players on sporting merit but the inherent contradiction in the ECB mail is not difficult to escape.
"Player selection must always be based on cricketing rationale, availability and team performance strategy/needs. No one should be denied a place in The Hundred because of their nationality, and it is within the powers of the Cricket Regulator to investigate should it receive any evidence of a team adopting a policy of excluding players based on nationality.
"Our competition will thrive when the best available talent - domestic and international - is given the opportunity to perform, inspire, and elevate the standard of the tournament," the ECB letter states. The mail, it is learnt, was sent to the franchises a couple of nights ago.
The ECB mail, however, exposes some fundamental inconsistencies. Over the last five years, there were only two players in three seasons (2021, 22 and 25). Not a single woman player from Pakistan featured in the five seasons of The Hundred.
There were six and four players in the 2023 and 24 season but for the majority of the The Hundred seasons, six of the eight franchises did not have a Pakistani player. What is more, last year, no Pakistani player was picked in the draft and the two players who featured in the season eventually - Imad Wasim and Mohammad Amir - came in as replacement players.
Each squad can comprise 15-16 players, with the ECB allowing a maximum of four overseas players - both in the overall squad and in the playing XI. Teams have already been permitted to directly sign two overseas players, leaving only two foreign slots to be filled at the auction. If a franchise is forced to pick a Pakistani player(s) for one or both overseas slots, then it begs the question that will it be cricketing rationale as mentioned in the ECB communication.
Cricbuzz was first to report on February 20 that 63 Pakistani men, including Salman Agha, Shaheen Afridi, Saim Ayub, Usman Tariq, Shadab Khan, Haris Rauf, Mohammad Nawaz, Naseem Shah, Abrar Ahmed and Mohammad Amir, have registered for the March 11-12 auction in London.
The ECB's email comes amid reports that players may speak out on the issue - a development some interpret as a veiled warning to the authorities. "There'll be a group of players that will speak up. There'll be things done about it. I think players should speak up. Anyone that has any sort of concern for these kinds of things - it doesn't matter if they have Pakistani heritage - should speak up.
"It'd be really interesting to see what happens, because I genuinely think other countries can do what they want, obviously we're not in control of those things, but in the UK, we have a bit more say about these things," Moeen Ali who has played in eight seasons of the IPL, has been quoted as saying in the English media.
Six of the eight franchises - London Spirit (owned by US-based tech investors), MI London (Reliance Industries), Manchester Super Giants (RPSG Group), Southern Brave (GMR Group), Sunrisers Leeds (Sun TV) and Welsh Fire (US-based Sanjay Govil) - having Indian connections.
Four of those managements have direct IPL links - Mumbai Indians, Delhi Capitals, Lucknow Super Giants and Sunrisers Hyderabad - and they, along with other Indian owners, have stayed away from signing Pakistani players in overseas leagues, be it the SA20 in South Africa or the ILT20 in the UAE, for obvious political tensions between the countries. But there has never been a blanket ban on Pakistani players. There were occasions when Indian franchises picked Pakistani players in their overseas leagues.
