With the ever growing popularity of Twenty20 cricket, the PCB has in the recent past organised many such tournaments. While such tournaments may be seen as a good source of generating income for a cash strapped organisation such as the PCB, they have failed to put a reasonable price tag on the players' match fees.

 Pakistan’s domestic tournament commences on Sunday with 13 local teams and the Afghanistan team set to take part in the week long carnival of cricket in Karachi.

Whilst four day cricket in Pakistan struggles to attract the crowds, the Twenty20 format has attracted a huge following both in the stadia and on television. The previous tournament in Faisalabad proved to be a huge success and saw the Iqbal stadium packed to the rafters for each match. 

The Pakistan Cricket Board seeing the popularity of the twenty over version have decided to host such tournaments on a regular basis, largely to help their dwindling finances and to cover for the lack of international cricket at home.

However whilst the packed stadia and the sponsorship deals have helped the coffers of the PCB, the players on the other hand feel that they have been short changed and devalued by the PCB hierarchy.

Speaking on the assurance of anonymity several players from various teams spoke to PakPassion.net about the poor match fees for the Faysal Bank tournament.

A player from one of the teams stated “Whilst the PCB has signed lucrative deals with sponsors and are making huge amounts of money from the Faysal Bank tournament, the players who are an integral part of the success are literally being forgotten about. We are being treated like cattle and just being used.”

Player’s match fees are reported to be around 4000 rupees per match which is loose change compared to some of the levels of pay for players taking part in other domestic Twenty20 tournaments around the world.

Another player stated “the match fees are derisory, how are we supposed to survive on such poor levels of pay. I could understand it if the PCB were not making money from this tournament but the fact is that a lot of money is being made by them. It would only be fair to hand some of those profits down to the players.”

The general consensus from other players that spoke with Pakpassion.net is that the levels of pay need drastically improving for all of the players and support staff especially given that the tournament is so high profile and attracting a lot of commercial interest inside and outside Pakistan. Some players spoke of the urgent need for a player’s union, something that has been spoken about over the years but is yet to materialise and which would push the cause of the players to the PCB.