Our fans have deluded themselves into thinking that having less number of teams is the magic key to building a high performance environment that will make Pakistan an elite team in the future.
Pakistan team is in such dire straits and our fans are in such a miserable situation that you can sell them any dummy and they will run with it.
We have blindly copy pasted the Australian model without thinking it through and without realizing that it is not suitable or sustainable in a country with 200m+ people with the second largest pool of cricketers in the country.
If this dumb theory of less teams = higher quality was true, India would not have had 38 FC sides and New Zealand would not have 6 teams for 5 million people.
So if this dumb theory would work, India would become invincible if they have 9 FC teams like the 9 IPL franchises. In a country of 1.3 billion people, with only 9 FC teams, only the elite of the elite will make it to FC cricket.
Heck, if they only have 2 teams, then every single player will be of the quality of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma and Bumrah, and India will never lose a game of cricket again.
New Zealand have less people than Karachi and Lahore put together and cricket is not even their most popular sport, but yet they have 6 FC teams.
So perhaps New Zealand should also have only 2 FC teams and they would become the strongest team in the world.
This 6 team drama will never work in Pakistan. It is simply not sustainable. It can only work in theory where the regions do not pick TTFs and only go for young players who could potentially excel in international cricket.
However, practically, that is not possible because regions will always pick domestic bullies and proven performers because they need to win matches as well and not just look at the interests of the national team.
That is why in every domestic system, you will find players who have failed at the international level or are not good enough for international level but are still picked because they do well in domestic.
So what has this lead to? Young cricketers in Pakistan are moving away from the game because they will never get a fair shot in this ridiculous system that is completely incompatible with our population.
It is easy for some to say now that good riddance, he was not good enough so he ran away etc., but this is only the beginning. Eventually, some genuinely talented players will also get filtered out because there are not enough spots (even with the second teams) and there are too many domestic bullies who are hogging the spots.
As a result, you will find young players moving away from the game or trying to become PSL specialists and use that route to get into the Pakistan side, which is a recipe for disaster because cricket skills are and always will be honed in FC cricket.
We will then keep picking and hyping players with no FC experience like Naseem or Rauf, and then they will fail with flying colors like Naseem did against England after all the big talk and expectations, and then our fans will make excuses and celebrated the “he bowled a great delivery to Joe Root” trophy after 3 wickets in 3 Tests at an average of 70+.
This model is not sustainable and I can guarantee that PCB will take a U-turn on it in the near future. They already know that it is a blunder but they cannot back-track immediately out of shame and because of their bloated egos.
In the future, we will either see a return of departmental cricket or the number of teams will be increased to 12-15.
Anyone who thinks this current model is a sustainable one and will help Pakistan become a more competitive, strong side in all formats is in for a brutal reality-check and Pakistani fans love reality-checks.
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