Pakistan players to be granted NOCs for Abu Dhabi T10

The PCB and Abu Dhabi T10 (ADT10) have reached an agreement that will allow Pakistani players to participate in the 10-over league, which starts this weekend. The PCB will receive a lump sum payment in return for granting players NOCs along with access to cricket and training facilities at the Abu Dhabi Cricket and Sports Hub for the next year.

Cricinfo understands the arrangement between the two parties was ratified on Thursday, only two days before the start of the tournament.

The payment amount is understood to be less than the PCB's initial demand of USD 10,000 for each NOC for the 16 players originally picked in the draft on September 30. One official told Cricinfo the PCB deemed the new arrangement to be more beneficial for Pakistan cricket than the monetary compensation it had sought earlier.

The NOCs had been held up after the PCB demanded a fee for making their players available this week, despite ADT10 applying for their NOCs immediately after the player draft over a month ago.

This was the second time in as many months that the PCB has sought a fee from a league in exchange for granting NOCs at the last minute. In October, the PCB stopped its players from participating in the Nepal Premier League (NPL) only days before the start of the tournament, demanding USD 25,000 for each NOC from the league management. This was after the players had been issued the NOCs for the NPL. Most of the players had already traveled to Nepal by then.

The PCB has had an on-off policy of seeking a fee in return for issuing an NOC to participate in franchise leagues in recent years. It first cropped up as an issue at the time of the ILT20 launch. At the time, the rationale was to apply the fee for leagues in which the PCB felt a reciprocal player availability arrangement was not especially attractive. The PCB considers that the players from the UAE and Nepal would not be as much in demand as their Pakistani counterparts in the leagues played under the auspices of the Emirates Cricket Board.

With opportunities for the Pakistan players in overseas leagues already thin because of the strained geopolitical relationship between Pakistan and India, they complain that such erratic behaviour from the PCB will further dry up their opportunities as the teams and leagues will start preferring players from other countries to avoid excessive cost and inconvenience.