Question would be that how was that money spent when the quality of products were not shaping up to be international quality more often then not. Someone like Abdullah Shafique didnt play any domestic cricket for whole 1 year in departmental cricket (He never got a contract I believe from any department) after he graduated from U19 level. Now he is scoring runs at test level, so there was definitely something wrong with the way things were run. Money was being invested into 18 or so teams and around 400 players and yet the best young talent we have had in the last decade or so came from junior level progression of the PCB and nothing much to rave about from the department side as they didnt use to provide much junior level infrastructure.
Further the logistics side of the things is often forgot. Carrying out a 18 team competition needs number of quality grounds and pitches, that was never the case and stats of some of the pacers of the departmental era were earth shattering but, they somehow were never international quality as they either never played or not much.
It might have been PKR 1 billion money that was going in but, the results have been far from ideal throughout even our memorable era of 90s when most players were handpicked at young age and there were leaders who used to scout themselves and were further developed in county cricket. So departmental cricket setup was never fully tested even in 90s, when it started getting tested post Wasim and others then it failed quite considerably in delivering the results on its and we saw Pak cricket decline in that period onwards until recently with some talent and some currently world class players to look forward too.
I dont mind departmental cricket coming back as 2nd tier league but, 6 team structure (Can maybe add a team or two) including its 2nd Xi, U19 setup and school/club level cricket should remain there as the main bridge to the national team. Its also a fact that department wont consider young players because Pakistan cricket team needs them rather their main focus would is based upon match to match basis while associations and regions under PCB can consider the national as they can work as an integrated unit with them being part of the single system. We saw glimpses of this in the new setup when the 2019-2020 saw all regions play leggies in national T20 cup as there werent many around as backup to Shadab and Nawaz. Qadir and Zahid came into the main scene back then.
Corporates like HBL defuncted their team and they are founding more value in sponsoring PSL. You can pressurize Gov departments to form teams again but, corporates only go where they find best value.
