Pakistan Cricket Board mulls regulation to forbid agents from signing more than 2-3 players

Karachi: The Pakistan Cricket Board is looking to implement a regulation which forbids any player's agent or company from signing more than 2 to 3 players at one time for representation.

The cricket management committee running the Board affairs is expected to take a final decision on this regulation in the next couple of days after two agencies signed on dozens of Pakistani team players and officials for representation.

After realising that one agent, Talha Rehmani and his company Saya Corporation represented 7-8 leading Pakistani players and officials including Babar Azam, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Muhammad Rizwan, PCB has now learnt that another agency known as International Cricketers Association (ICA) also has contracts with many players and officials presently touring Australia.

Concerned with the development, PCB chairman Zaka Ashraf has directed the legal department to frame new set of regulations for vetting agents/companies before they sign on players and officials and restricting the number of clients they can have at one 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 clients list.

More importantly even the Pakistan team director, Muhammad Hafeez was working with ICA until recently.

While Hafeez has resigned, it has now emerged that the national team bowling coach Umar Gul, Spin bowling coach Saeed Ajmal, batting consultant Adam Hollioake and the team’s strength and conditioning trainer and national selector Kamran Akmal are also on the ICA clientele.

Zaka Ashraf from time to time in his interviews has raised concerns that one agent or company having so many players under its umbrella basically means it can yield a lot of influence and say in the team selection and affairs.

In a recent leaked audio conversation, Ashraf could be 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 leave the captaincy in all three formats.

"These agents basically 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 from Inzamam ul Haq as chief selector after it launched an inquiry into reports that the former captain was an owner in a sports marketing company with Rizwan and Rehmani as his partners.

The inquiry was to confirm whether Inzamam’s affiliation with the company was a conflict of interest as he was a paid employee of the board but the inquiry has fizzled out after the board said it had accepted Inzamam’s resignation.