Organisers of the Nepal Premier League (NPL) have said that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is demanding a fee of $25,000 (INR 23.73 lakh) each for allowing Pakistani players permission to participate in the league.
According to Cricinfo, the PCB has yet to issue No-Objection Certificates (NoCs) to the players, while some of those who had been issued the NoCs have been told their permission is now on ‘hold’.
The participating players included Pakistan’s T20 captain Sahibzada Farhan, Haider Ali, Hunain Shah, Hussain Talat, Iftikhar Ahmed, Hasan Ali and Usama Mir. Some are already in Kathmandu and now stranded without NoCs on the eve of the league, which will run from October 26 to November 21. Others, who had not travelled yet, have halted their
plans until the issue is resolved.
The report said it couldn’t independently verify NPL organisers’ claim about the monetary demand. However, this is not the first time such an issue has been raised.
Earlier, USA league Major League Cricket (MLC) franchise owners had raised similar concerns over the PCB’s alleged demand for $25,000 per player to issue NoCs. According to local reports at the time, the board did not disclose the fee during recruitment and communicated the demand when replacing the player was no longer a viable option.
The report also claimed that the PCB was the only cricket board seeking such compensation in the MLC, with no publicly available policy outlining the charges. The issue prompted franchise owners to approach PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi, with some describing the practice as ‘extortion’.
Haris Rauf, who represented the San Francisco Unicorns, was the only Pakistani player in the MLC that season, with the franchise agreeing to pay the fee.
NoCs for overseas leagues have been a huge point of contention between the PCB and the players. A solution seems to have been reached when Naqvi announced a new contract system that included a category for T20 specialists, who didn’t even need NoCs, but the contracts haven’t been distributed either.
