PCB chairman Ramiz Raja is very keen to adopt an IPL-style auction process to finalise squads in the Pakistan Super League as early as next season. The official said PSL 2023 could well have a pre-tournament auction taking place.
The PSL has followed the draft process since its inception back in 2016, with players divided into different categories depending on their respective performances. But that could well change ahead of the 2023 season, with Ramiz, the former Pakistan batter, hoping to “elevate” the perceptions around PSL and see if it could rival the financial clout of the mighty IPL.
“We need to create new properties to be financially independent. We have nothing for now but the PSL and ICC funds. There’s an argument over the model from next year; I want to switch it to an auction model from next year. The market forces are conducive, but we’ll sit down with the franchise owners to discuss it,”
he was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.
With the IPL window already expanding from 45 to 63 days and likely to continue expanding with an increase in the tournament franchises’ financial muscle, the league, which even though has a different window of its own, might find it an issue to attract the world’s best cricketers considering workloads.
For Ramiz, the ultimate aim of having an auction is to make the tournament even more enticing a proposition for those players and ensure they continue to choose both, not one of the leagues going forward.
“This is a game of money,” he recognised. “When the cricket economy grows in Pakistan, our respect will rise. The main driver of that financial economy is the PSL. If we take the PSL to auction model, increase the purse, then I’ll put it in the IPL bracket. And then we’ll see who goes to play the IPL over the PSL.”
PSL’s adoption of the IPL-style auction procedure will depend largely on the financial clout of its six franchises and how comfortable they would be to concede more money to finalise their respective squads.
When the PSL was launched, and the board chose the draft system over IPL’s auction process, the idea was simply to give teams with inferior financial clout a chance to compete on a level playing field.
It has worked out quite well for PCB in that regard as the first seven editions of the PSL have seen all teams grabbing hold of the trophy at least once.
