PCB is considering regulations to ban agents from signing more than 2-3 players

The Pakistan Cricket Board wants to implement a regulation that would ban a player's agent or company from signing up more than two to three players for representation at a time.

The cricket management committee that handles governance affairs is expected to make a final decision on the arrangement in the coming days after two agencies signed dozens of Pakistani team players and officials for representation.

After realizing that one agent, Talha Rehmani and his company Saya Corporation were representing seven to eight leading Pakistani players and officials, including Babar Azam, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Muhammad Rizwan, PCB has now learned that another body known as the International Cricketers Association (ICA), has done just that. contracts with many players and officials currently touring Australia.

Concerned over the development, PCB chairman Zaka Ashraf has directed the legal department to frame new rules for vetting agents/companies before signing up players and officials and limiting the number of clients they can have at a time in Pakistan cricket .

The ICA apparently has Sarfaraz Ahmed, Imam ul Haq, Saim Ayub, Muhammad Haris, Naseem Shah, Abdullah Shafique, Usama Mir, Aamer Jamal and Muhammad Hasnain on its client list.

More importantly, even the Pakistani team director, Muhammad Hafeez, worked at ICA until recently.

Although Hafeez has resigned, it has now emerged that the national team's bowling coach Umar Gul, Spin bowling coach Saeed Ajmal, batting consultant Adam Hollioake and the team's strength and conditioning coach and national selector Kamran Akmal are also among the clientele of belong to the ICA.

Zaka Ashraf has from time to time in his interviews expressed concerns about an agent or company having so many players under its umbrella, which basically means it can have a lot of influence and say in team selection and affairs.

In a recently leaked audio conversation, Ashraf was heard saying that when the PCB offered Babar Azam only the Test captaincy after the ODI World Cup, he called up his agent Talha Rehman, who advised him to vacate the captaincy in all three formats.

“These agents actually have a lot of influence and power in the team through their clientele and we are trying to deal with that,” he was heard saying in the leaked audio.

The PCB had also accepted a resignation of Inzamam ul Haq as chief selector after it launched an investigation into reports that the former captain owned a sports marketing company with Rizwan and Rehmani as his partners.

The investigation was to confirm whether Inzamam's connection to the company was a conflict of interest as he was a paid employee of the board of directors, but the investigation came to nothing after the board said it had accepted Inzamam's resignation.

First print: December 24, 2023 | 11:02 PM IST