Top Pakistan cricketers including captain Babar Azam, wicket-keeper Mohammad Rizwan, all-rounder Hasan Ali and pacer Shaheen Shah Afridi have appealed to Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to consider a hike in match fees as per reports of cricketpakistan.com.pk.
All four players recently signed a Grade A contract with PCB but are unhappy as there was no increase in match-fee for Tests, ODIs, or T20Is in the new contracts.
PCB drafted a new performance-based central contract list in July for the 2021-22 season. The list contained three categories featuring 20 cricketers, including three emerging players. The match fees for players across categories remained equal.
Only the four mentioned players received and Grade A contract.
Former captains Azhar Ali and Sarfaraz Ahmed were giving Grade B and Grade C contracts respectively. Veterans Mohammad Hafeez, Wahab Riaz, and Shoaib Malik were excluded from the central contract.
PCB increased the match-fees of B and C categories to bring uniformity, while only the retainership percentage was increased by 25 percent for Grade A.
Test-match fee was increased by 15 percent, ODI fee by 20%, and T20I fee by 25 percent for the Grade B category. Similarly, for Grade C there was a 25 percent increase in retainer, 34 percent increase in Test-match fee, 50 and 67 percent increase in ODI and T20I match fees respectively.
As per the website reports, one of the senior players have already protested with PCB director- International Cricket, Zakir Khan to hike the match fees of Grade A players.
The senior cricketer is confident that the board will not decline the request, even as Zakir Khan has not confirmed anything yet. The report also said that PCB had denied any claims of such a demand from any player.
(PTI inputs)
