By Tridib Baparnash
New Delhi: Shaheen Shah Afridi, Shadab Khan and Haris Rauf are among 63 Pakistan players, featured in a list of more than 950 players, barring Indians, who have registered for next month’s auction of The Hundred, but their prospects are clouded by the presence of Indian Premier League (IPL) team owners either fully or partially owning a few franchises, besides their international commitments, with Pakistan scheduled to tour the West Indies for a Test series in August.
The tournament, run by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), has undergone partial privatisation, with four of its eight franchises — Mumbai Indians (MI London), Lucknow Super Giants (Manchester Super Giants), Sunrisers Hyderabad (Sunrisers Leeds) and Delhi Capitals (Southern Brave), now either fully owned or part-owned by IPL ownership groups. Those links have triggered concerns about whether Pakistani players could face an unofficial “shadow ban” similar to their continued absence from the cash-rich IPL.
No active Pakistan international has featured in the IPL since the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, after which diplomatic relations between India and Pakistan deteriorated sharply. Since then, IPL franchises, both at home and in overseas ventures, have largely refrained from signing Pakistani players. The frostiness in bilateral ties has frequently spilled into cricketing decisions, and escalated in the past one year following the barbaric Pahalgam terror attacks and subsequent military response by India through Op Sindoor.
The recent group-stage match between the two teams at the ongoing T20 World Cup was nearly cancelled after the Pakistani government threatened to boycott the fixture before an ICC intervention forced them to withdraw their decision.
According to a BBC report quoting sources, “Pakistan cricketers are not being considered by Indian-owned sides for next month’s The Hundred auction.” However, ECB chief executive Richard Gould had earlier insisted that the involvement of Pakistani players in The Hundred would be unaffected by the league’s new ownership structure.
Former England captain Michael Vaughan weighed in on the debate, urging the board to address the matter decisively. “The ECB need to act fast on this,” Vaughan wrote on X. “They own the league and this should not be allowed to happen .. the most inclusive sport in the country is not one that allows this to happen.”
It will be interesting to see if The Hundred bucks that trend when the auction unfolds with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) that owns league, making it clear that the teams will need to buy between 16-18 players for their men’s squads, while 15 players will make up the women’s squads. . XC KK