PCB slashes annual budget by 10 percent, allots biggest chunk towards domestic cricket

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has allocated biggest percentage of its 7.76 billion rupee annual budget for the development of domestic cricket while slashing it by 10 percent.

The budget which was approved at the Board of Governors (BOG) meeting on Friday sees 71 percent of the total expenditure budget allocated to cricketing activities.

The allocated 71.2 percent cricket budget includes 25.2 percent for domestic cricket (events and players/match officials/player support personnel contracts and High Performance Centre costs), 19.3 per cent for international cricket (home/away series and player contracts).

Representational image of Pakistan Cricket Board. Reuters

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A 5.5 percent for women's cricket (home/away cricket and player contracts), 19.7 percent for PSL 2021 and 1.5 percent for Medical and Sport Sciences.

In the BOG held via video conference under the chairmanship of Ehsan Mani it was decided to reduce the budget by 10 percent as part of the PCB's austerity, robust financial management and belt-tightening exercise.

"These steps have been taken to ensure that despite tough financial situations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cricket remains unaffected and the PCB continues to invest in the future," a PCB release said.

The BOG was also informed that due to the COVID-19 pandemic there will be a shortfall in revenues as the pandemic has left the fate of revenues from international events hanging in balance and may also affect PCB's commercial programme.

The BOG has also agreed to continue investment on infrastructure development by approving a 1.22 billion budget for capital expenditure, a reduction of approximately 800 million from 2019-20.

Mani said "We have followed a strict cost-benefit and value for money policy while preparing this budget taking into consideration the economic situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The budget caters for all critical business of cricket activities, while the nice-to-have activities have been set aside as part of our cost-cutting measures and to protect our reserves for the future."

According to the new monthly retainer structure, the PCB will again offer 192 leading domestic players (32 from each of the six Cricket Associations) performance-based contracts, but instead of paying a flat monthly retainer of 50,000 to all players, this season slab-wise payments will be made.

The four slabs are PKR 1,50,000, PKR 85,000, PKR 75,000 and PKR 40,000, all of which are on a monthly basis.