Karachi: Livid with the Pakistan team’s early elimination from the T20 World Cup, the country’s cricket board is contemplating financial penalties on the players for their below-par show.
A reliable source said that while reports of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) deducting remuneration of the players were incorrect, appropriate action is being considered in the wake of the team’s exit from the Super Eight stage of the event co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka.
“No final decision has been taken on this as yet. But yes, it is under consideration to financially penalise the players,” he confirmed to PTI without revealing the details.
The Pakistani cricket team has not done well in the last few ICC events, and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), under chairman Mohsin Naqvi, has now decided to put its foot down. A report in tribune.com.pk says the decision was taken much before their ouster — when they lost to India in their group game.
In the previous T20 World Cup in 2024 that was held in the USA and the West Indies, Pakistan had even failed to reach the Super 8s, following losing to minnows USA and arch-rivals India. After which Naqvi had promised surgery, reacting to reports that the Pakistani players don’t get along well with each other, and they often keep personal ambitions above team goals.
Two years on, nothing has changed for the Pakistani cricket team. They once again lost to India last month in their group match. They barely won against the Netherlands.
Although they reached the Super 8s, there they couldn’t really up the ante, and as a result failed to reach the semis. Against Sri Lanka in their last Super 8 game, they, after scoring 212, needed to restrict Sri Lanka to 147 or less to reach the semis. Forget that, they barely won the match by just five runs. If not for a late collapse, they could have scored 20-30 runs more.
According to the report, PCB officials believe players must be fined for their poor show, using the argument that they also get rewards when they play well and win.
Pakistan captain Salman Agha had himself admitted that they were below par after their consoling, narrow win over Sri Lanka. “If you look at the whole tournament and I had to sum it up, we underperformed. Our middle order never performed, and we over-relied on Sahibzada [Farhan] for our runs,” he said.
It will be interesting to see how Sahibzada Faarhan reacts to all this, considering he was the only player in the Pakistani side who performed well all through. He scored 383 runs in seven matches at an average of 76.60, and surpassed Virat Kohli’s record of most runs in a single edition. Virat had scored 319 runs in the 2014 T20 World Cup. Farhan also scored two centuries, a first in the history of the T20 World Cup.
