MUMBAI: With just under two months to go for the second edition of the T10 League in Sharjah, its president and key financiar Salman Iqbal has dissociated from the fledgling cricket property.
Iqbal, owner and CEO of leading Pakistani media conglomerate ARY Group, has cited lack of transparency and unprofessionalism as being among the reasons for his decision to de-link from the T10 League, which only last month had secured official sanction from the International Cricket Council (ICC) for its second season, to be held from November 23.
“I am resigning from my the position of president T10 league and disassociating myself from all its operations,” Iqbal said in a statement issued on Tuesday. “The reason for my resignation is lack of transparency, unprofessionalism and no proper structure of the league which I have been persistently asking for and can no longer continue without the same.
“Private cricket leagues that are not controlled by ICC and have independent players monitoring system, added with lack of policies and procedures may lead to numerous misconducts. I had joined the venture as I felt the need to represent Pakistan in this new format and promote cricket and Pakistani cricketers at different platforms.”
ESPNcricinfo reports that Iqbal’s presence was a major factor behind the participation of top Pakistani players in the inaugural season of the T10 League. Originally, the PCB was not willing to allow their players to take part since the league directly clashed with the commercial interests of the Pakistan Super League in the UAE. But Iqbal, despite having a stake in PSL, managed to convinced then PCB chairman Najam Sethi to let them participate.
It also bears noting that it was on the back of the PCB’s support that the organisers were able to hike the franchise fee for the two new teams that joined the T10 League from $400,000 to $1.2 million.
“My prime objective for the league was to safeguard the interest of Pakistani players and promote Pakistani cricket,” Iqbal’s statement said. “With current standing of the league, it is obvious that the league is heading in wrong direction and we can not allow Pakistani players to be misused for vested interests of foreign individuals. Proper systems and monitoring should be in place and controlled by ICC, which safeguards all players and sanctity of the game. I believe it is better for me to part ways with an unsupervised (emphasis ours) T10 league.”
Interesting that Iqbal now calls the league “unsupervised”. To quote his statement last month after ICC’s conditional endorsement: “The sanction from the ICC will only add further shine to the global appeal of the event. We believe that value creation for the new teams will see a positive growth from year one. From four-day league to a ten-day league with more teams and larger pool of international players is a testament of faith shown by fans and stakeholders.”
The second edition of the tournament is scheduled to start on November 23. And before that the player draft is supposed to happen some time next month.
It remains to be seen how Shaji Ul Mulk, principal promoter and chairman, T10 League, resolves this crisis.
Related Report
T10 League secures ICC sanction for 2nd season
