Last Updated on 4 years ago by Charbel Coorey
Cricket News: PCB to question proposed longer window for the IPL | PCB chairman Ramiz Raja will question IPL window in next FTP
The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is set to challenge the potential two-and-a-half-months window that will be given to the Indian Premier League (IPL) in the upcoming Future Tours Program (FTP) of the International Cricket Council (ICC). PCB Chairman Ramiz Raja will raise this issue in the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the ICC next month. The FTP for the forthcoming eight-year cycle hasn’t been released yet.
However, Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Jay Shah revealed recently that a 10-team IPL will have a two-and-a-half-month-long window in the FTP to ensure the participation of all top international players.
“There hasn’t been any announcement on increasing the [IPL] window. I have views on it which we’ll raise at the ICC platform in the July meeting,” Raja’s statement was quoted in a report by the ESPN Cricinfo.
PCB & Pakistan cricket can be impacted by a longer IPL
Pakistani cricketers are barred from participating in the IPL largely due to the frosty international relations between the two countries. Several players from across the border had taken part in the inaugural edition of the tournament back in 2008. However, the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks and the subsequent events effectively shut doors on the role of Pakistani players in the mega tournament.
Naturally, the IPL leads a major blow to the PCB’s international calendar as almost all the major players from top cricketing countries are engaged in the mega tournament during the Indian summer.
With the number of IPL teams increasing to 10 from this year, the BCCI has declared that the matches per season will shoot up to 84 in 2025 and 2026 and then 94 4 in 2027. These revelations were made in the bid documents of the e-auctions of the media rights for the next five seasons of the IPL.
Ramiz Raja still hopeful of quadrangular T20I tournament
Meanwhile, Raja has continued to harbour hopes on his idea of the quadrangular T20I tournament involving India, Pakistan, England and Australia. Earlier this year, the PCB Chairman had presented this proposal by stating that bilateral contests were financially draining and hence greater revenue could be generated from a tournament of this kind.
Raja considered this proposition to be similar to the ‘Six Nations’ concept of the Rugby Union that witnesses six European countries face off each other in an annual competition. However, no firm call was taken on this idea in the ICC board meeting in April this year. Now, Raja claims that the project is not dead yet. He says that it has been pushed aside for the time being so as to not introduce another property at a time when the media rights for other ICC tournaments are being bundled together.
“My four-nations concept is not yet dead. The media seems to have got the impression that it has been shelved. That’s not true. They were bundling rights for World Cup events, so they said if they announced another property, then all investors would start chasing this,” the 59-year-old opened up on the issue.
He added, “This would become a new challenge, so they thought it better not to introduce it yet. But this will be the only cricket board that will challenge any platform where it believes Pakistan is being short-changed. When we get this development [of the IPL window expanding] formally, we will put across our views in a robust manner.”
