Pakistan Super League season 4 to begin on the 14th of February as decided by the PCB and as per the top news about eight matches will be staged in Pakistan however, the final will be played in the heart of Pakistan, the city of lights, Karachi.
The New PCB chairman Ehsan Mani along with all the Franchise owners attended the governing council meeting to finalize things about the fourth season of Pakistan Super League earlier on Saturday. The council decided that eight PSL matches will be held in Karachi and Lahore and the final match will be played in the ground of Karachi. However, the third edition of the National cricket league of Pakistan had only 3 matches held in the country. Now for the 2nd year running, Karachi will hold the final on March 17th, 2019.
The tournament will kick start on February 14th.
In the meeting on Saturday, the council also planned for inviting new bids for title sponsors. In addition to this broadcast rights were also discussed. The initial deal that was signed, was with Habib Bank Limited and Ten Sports which were both for 3 years but now PSL’s value has increased substantially in its 3 seasons. The previous management under Najam Sethi was pretty much able to carve out a niche brand and it resulted as the break-in of a 6th franchise in the form of Multan Sultans.
Several speculations have been made regarding the sponsorship as it is now expected that the new management of PCB will charge a considerably higher amount for the title sponsorship and also for the broadcasting rights as well.
A long-term demand of franchises has been met by the new Pakistan Cricket Board chairman and they have been included in the various subcommittees which are handling the bids related to the entire tournament. Although there was a dispute earlier between Najam Sethi’s team and the Multan Sultan franchise (who wanted to be a part of the bidding process)
PCB chairman Ehsan Mani said,
‘PCB’s aim is to ensure transparency and working in partnership with all franchises in order to make PSL a bigger success. PCB and all PSL franchises are partners in this project and I am confident that we will all work together to bring in good numbers for our next rights cycle. The inclusion of franchises in the decision-making process highlights the need to ensure the collective growth of all partners’
Each team will retain 10 players including two foreign players from the platinum bracket. Each squad can have 20 players including emerging talent. The draft for PSL 4 will follow the same order for the last three drafts, according to which picks would be ordered as per the team league table from PSL 3. However, from PSL 5, the draft would take place randomly.
It has also been decided that the first team to pick during the draft will be Lahore Qalandars.
