Pakistan Domestic Season 2005/06

[Orchid]

PCB has announced the schedule and prize monies for the 2005/06 domestic season.

Both the main tournaments: the First Class (Quaid-e-Azam Trophy) and the limited overs (ABN AMRO Cup) will be played between regional teams and the Patron’s Trophy will be between corporations. The team names that became extremely popular have been retained from last year for the limited overs tournaments.

I’m still trying to figure out what criteria was used to classify teams into ‘Gold’ and ‘Silver’ bands. However, I sense a genuine effort at making this a long term thing as there is even provision for ‘promotion’ and ‘relegation’ from Gold to Silver for the next season.

[Maranello]

Yes it is unclear how the two tiers were set-up. But still, relegation and promotion should add further spice to the various competitions. There also seems to be significant prize money around, which is good. And most importantly, the Gold tier matches will be televised live, which is excellent.

Now, if only they start preparing better and more sporting pitches, we might end up with a domestic structure that is some good!

[Zainub]

Best part from the link above:

ABN AMRO Twenty–20 Tournament will be played at Karachi and Lahore. Main matches will be played at Karachi and will be televised.

[Orchid]

Just noted that the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy matches clash with the Tests against England, so some teams will be missing out on some major players.

[Maranello]

Sure but that's often the case, not just in Pakistan but everywhere - the international cricket season always coincides with the domestic season, and has always done so. The 12 who will play the Tests against England will presumably all be contracted to PCB, so probably would not have been available for selection for their domestic teams anyway, unless Woolmer and Inzamam gave someone leave to play a match to work on something.

[Orchid]

Yes true, but I was thinking of teams like Lahore and Karachi who make up the majority of the national team and missing these players would weaken their team. But anyway good though, it will make the competition better and more equal, in a way. Also, since these two cities actually have 2 teams each, the players are probably split into the 2 teams so the impact on their each team probably will be minimum.

[Orchid]

Don't know how reliable this news is, but per The News we may see some overseas players in the Domestic tournaments. No mention of this was made in the PCB's official media release though.

If true, it will bring about a bunch of interesting issues and possiblities regarding what type of overseas players will opt to play in Pakistan; will there be any quotas to protect the local players; will it only benefit the richer teams etc etc.

[haseebbutt007]

The inclusion of regional sides to domestic compititions has increased the interest of general public all over the country . And it good to see .

[Zainub]

I heard that too actually, but I was told it would apply to one one kind of competetion, can't remember where I heard it, must have been a talk show on Indus Plus TV.

No official word on it though as yet.

[Zainub]

The Karachi Cricket Association has announced a list of probables for Karachi’s squad for the upcoming Quaid-e-Azam Trophy. A PCB-supervised selection committee shall hold trials of these players on Friday, 9 October, 2005 at NSK after net practice sessions on the same venue on Wednesday. The players are as follows:

Zone 1: Mansoor Khan, Salman Khan, Tahir Khan, Abdul Qadir, Tariq Haroon, Sharjeel Ashraf, Faisal Mirza, Ameen-ur-Rehman, Haris Ayaz, Waseem Naeem, Rashid Ali, Asif Zakir, Nasir Khan, Tabish Khan, Irfan Ansari and Wajahat Farooque.


Zone 2: Nuamanullah, Saeed bin Nasir, Jawed Waqar, Saad Waseem, Danial Ahsan, Fawad Alam, Atif Ali Zaidi, Naveed Khan, Naseer Khan, Imranullah, Asim Zaidi, Hasan Saeed, Faraz Ahmed Khan and Mirza Adnan.

Zone 3: Agha Sabir, Afsar Nawaz, Fahad Iqbal, Saad Umer, Ahmed Zeeshan Malik, M. Eijaz, Faheem Ahmed, Ali Mohammad Madni, Rajeesh Ramesh, Fahad Khan, Fahad Babur, Talha Laghari, M. Muzzaffar and Zahid Ghori.

Zone 4: Khalid Latif, Khurram Mansoor, Aariz Kamal, M. Furrukh, Azam Hussain, Nasir Azeez, Nadeem Shah, Azeem-ul-Hasan, Farman Ali, Farman Shah, Farhan Adeel, Sajid Younus, M. Bilal and Aamir Shahid.

Zone 5: Zeeshan Pervaiz, Mohammad Manzoor, Adnan Malik, Rizwan Saeed, Wajid Ali, Ashraf Ali, Mohtashim Ali, Malik Aftab Alam, Atif Maqbool, Sajid Qurieshi and Mohammad Muzzaffar.


Zone 6: Irfanuddin, Rizwan Qureishi, Tabish Nawab, Mansoor Baig, Fahadullah, Naeem Ahmed Khan, Saeed Khan, Nauman Alvi, Adnan Kaleem, Iftikhar Ali, Kamran Bin Mansoor, Faraz Ahmed Khan, Shahid Lateef, Asad Shafeeq, Shehreyar Ghani, Babur Agha and Imran Jawed.


Zone 7: Iqbal Sheikh, Farhan Iqbal, Faraz Patel, Mansoor Ahmed, Wajihuddin, Aftab Ahmed, Raheel Waris, M. Gul, Shareef Asadullah, Mutih-ur-Rehman, Tariq Rashid and Shadab Kabir.