Usama Mir was granted a Certificate of No Objection (NOC) to play for Worcestershire in the T20 Blast, and the only moderate conclusion that can be drawn is that it has never been more urgent for Pakistani cricket to have a players’ association.
The facts first. Mir is not part of Pakistan’s T20 World Cup team. He’s arguably unlucky, not just because of the form of the outgoing leggie, Shadab Khan, but because he’s the main wicket-taker in an irrepressible PSL this season.
The key fact is that he has a core contract with the PCB, so he is allowed to play in two T20 leagues in addition to PSL in one year of contract. Mir played in the 2023 Hundred and the 2023-24 BBL (although reduced). ). If I had played in the Blast, it would have been the third league in a year. The PCB said no.
The PCB fears that departing from this policy by allowing him to play would set a precedent where the whole “PSL plus two” policy would be redundant and incidentally it’s a concession that players fought pretty hard for last year. Mir will play in a third league this year and next year some other player may simply make a crusade for a third. Then another and another, and then it all comes crashing down.
There is a casual checkbox logic underlying LWOP rejection, which both casual and checkbox types can simply agree with. However, it’s fragile, especially given Mir’s quick circumstances, which, in short, mean he’s not doing anything right now. owe. No national commitment. And he’s played six A-List and T20 matches since the end of PSL on March 18, so there’s no doubt he’s overloaded.
As a Pakistani leader under central contract (and that cupboard, remember, is empty), he can simply play in an established T20 competition, learn, evolve. He might even be in a position if he gets an emergency call-up for the T20 World Cup. .
You could also earn the kind of money that will help you build a future. Mir is a D-rated player for Pakistan. He earns around $4,000 a month. His contract with Worcestershire, for the full level of Blast organisation (six to seven weeks), would reportedly pay him £50,000 (about $63,600) in the north.
He could earn that money without any charge to the PCB and without any effect on any projects they might have had for him. How complicated it has been for the president of the CCP, Mohsin Naqvi, who has the maximum and discretionary power!The strength to accede to such requests, review all of this, and grant to the NOC?Inflexible but case-by-case policy, which – *checks the grades* – has worked quite well for everyone involved.
Mir would have a better idea of his employers, as other people who care about him and care for him, not as an independent organization that wields wildly disproportionate force and denies him entirely moderate opportunities to earn a living. How do you feel now?
It is this imbalance of forces that the players’ agreement can correct. Importantly, in addition to securing heavily negotiated contracts or reaping the benefits of collective bargaining, the agreement positions players as, in fact, equivalent stakeholders in the game’s long-term. , not just workers beholden – in the case of Pakistan – to a fleeting and volatile system, and an unreliable employer.
Intermittently since the mid-1970s, Pakistan’s veteran players have sought out a framework of players with varying degrees of commitment but reliable degrees of failure. The current generation has done it too, without enthusiasm and without much unity. Mir is far from the first to face this situation. Pakistani cricketers have used the NOC as a weapon against them. He is the newest to realize that, in the long run, in order to sustain themselves, they will have to come together in a players’ association.