Re: Lord’s Scandal: Spot-fixing, VIDEOS ONLY
valid point surely but Imran Khan has never said that we should not support or pay good salaries to first-class cricketers
Just as an example let’s say we have a pool of 400 first-class cricketers in domestic competition, majority of whom will never ever get to play for Pakistan anyway because they are so medicore. Plus I know there are other factors like sifarish and nepotism so rampant in our society. Imran’s point is instead of 400 players playing B or even C-grade domestic cricket, take the best (say 150) players, divide them into highly competitive 6-8 regional teams and have first-class competition between them. The remaining 250 players should just play club cricket. He has seen the success of the Australian model while playing Sheffield cricket, the standard of which he thinks is as high as test cricket.
I w’d feel passionate about our domestic game if say Islamabad were playing Lahore or Quetta were playing Karachi etc. I have no interest is following PIA v Habib Bank or UBL v Allied Bank. Who cares which team wins or loses?
Lastly (and this is the most important point) the banks/departments instead of having their own teams should sponsor and support these strong regional (plus club) teams. So where does Aamir Sohail’s problem of rozi roti arise? He either does not want to understand Imran’s viewpoint or is just jealous or bitter about something. I suspect the latter is the case with Sohail.
If we want to raise the standard of our domestic game, few but highly competitive regional teams (supported by banks/departments) is the only way forward…