Pakistan cricketer Fakhar Zaman has lost his PCB central contract after openly criticizing the national cricket board for resting Babar Azam during the England Test series.
The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) announced the list of contracted players for the 2024-25 season on Sunday, October 27. While some young players received their first contracts, the names of a few veterans were missing from the list.
Among them was Fakhar Zaman, who had previously been classified as Category B in the central contracts for the previous season. His dismissal comes only a few weeks after he publicly attacked the decision to rest Babar Azam on his X handle.
The post did not go well with the PCB officials, therefore the board handed him a 'show cause' notice for his post.
Probably in the aftermath, Zaman has lost his central contract for the first time in 8 years. Apart from Fakhar, several notable names like Iftikhar Ahmed, Hassan Ali, Sarfaraz Ahmed, and Imam-ul-Haq are also missing from the central contracts list.
Another shocking discovery in the central contracts list was that ace pacer Shaheen Afridi, former T20I captain, has been demoted from Category A to Category B.
Previously, the Category A, which pays the most, had Shaheen Afridi, along with Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan. However, in the latest list, Shaheen has been demoted to Category B, grouped with Test captain Shan Masood and pacer Naseem Shah.
Mohammad Abbas Afridi, Khurram Shahzad, Muhammad Irfan Khan, Mohammad Ali, and Usman Khan are the new entrants in the contract list and are in Category D.
List of centrally contracted players:
Category A (2): Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan
Category B (3): Naseem Shah, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Shan Masood
Category C (9): Abdullah Shafique, Abrar Ahmed, Haris Rauf, Noman Ali, Saim Ayub, Sajid Khan, Salman Ali Agha, Saud Shakeel and Shadab Khan
Category D (11): Aamir Jamal, Haseebullah, Kamran Ghulam, Khurram Shahzad, Mir Hamza, Mohammad Abbas Afridi, Mohammad Ali, Mohammad Huraira, Muhammad Irfan Khan, Mohammad Wasim Jr and Usman Khan.
