After a lengthy gap of almost 12 years Pakistan turned out to be the champions in the Asia Cup yet again on a Bangladeshi soil that is assumed to be the fortune soil for Pakistan Cricket team as they also clinched their first ever Asia Cup on the same soil back in 2000 under the leadership of Moin Khan.
The players landed on the home soil on Saturday (24th March) with much tiredness and they should have been given a rest for at least a week or two to relax their bodies and celebrate the much awaited win, which came after a long struggle.
However, the players a day after arriving, were burdened with National Super Eight T20 Cup which came to an end Yesterday. Sialkot Stallions (the six-times national Twenty20 champions) as expected, won persuasively with eights wickets in hand, beating an unlucky Karachi Dolphins at a newly renovated Rawalpindi stadium.
Darling of the crowd Shahid Afridi and National captain Misbah ul Haq both refused to take part in the tournament owing to some personal reasons and very rightly so. On the other hand pacer Aizaz Cheema is on the sick bed mainly because of the reason that Pakistan Cricket team is playing cricket constantly for about 2 years without any appropriate gap that is causing serious injuries to the players specially the senior members of the team.
The only point that makes the cricket lovers think about is that why the tournament has been held right after the Asia cup, why the PCB didn’t give a thought to player’s health and fitness?
A straight forward answer to all the queries would be that it might be because of the sponsors, media partners or the live broadcasting private TV channel that holds the right to telecast the Domestic cricketing events as well as the IPL (Indian Premier League) accelerating from 4th of April to 27th May.
If the PCB would not have decided to stage the National T20 cup in immediate than it would have created interruption between the National Cup and the IPL, and the Private TV channel would never have given preference to Domestic T20 Cup over the IPL where the business is totally far above the ground of National Super T20 Cup.
Therefore, we can not blame PCB only, over the immediate organizing of the T20 cup. However PCB should seek alternatives for the future events and must not rely on private groups as the government now owns its all new Sports channel that really can help promoting Cricket events at the National or the International level.