By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: The England and Wales Cricket Board has written to all eight Hundred franchises reminding them of their responsibilities around discrimination, after reports emerged that Pakistan players are not being considered by the four sides with Indian Premier League ownership links.
The move follows a BBC Sport investigation earlier this week, which said the Indian-owned teams – Manchester Super Giants, MI London, Southern Brave and Sunrisers Leeds – would not be pursuing Pakistani cricketers for the player auction scheduled for 11 and 12 March in London.
It is understood that a senior ECB official has also warned in correspondence seen by agents that any evidence of players being ignored on grounds of nationality could trigger action. Last year ECB chief executive Richard Gould made clear his expectation that “players from all nations [would] be selected for all teams” in the competition and that “clear anti-discrimination policies” were in place.
The governing body retains overall control of The Hundred despite selling 49% stakes in each of the eight teams last year for a total of £500m, but its ability to force selections is limited; any formal accusation of discrimination would require clear evidence.
In response to the reports the ECB issued a statement saying: “The Hundred welcomes men’s and women’s players from all over the world and we would expect the eight teams to reflect that.” It added that almost 1,000 cricketers from 18 nations had registered for the auction, with more than 50 players from Pakistan among those who would feature on the longlist.
Sixty-seven Pakistan players – 63 men and four women – are among the 964 who have signed up. The men’s contingent includes Shaheen Shah Afridi, Shadab Khan, Haris Rauf, Naseem Shah and several others who set their reserve price at the maximum £100,000 bracket. Mohammad Amir and Imad Wasim were the only Pakistanis to appear in last year’s tournament, the final edition before the new private investors took control.
England’s white-ball captain Harry Brook, who has already been signed by Sunrisers Leeds – one of the Indian-owned franchises – for a tournament-record £465,000 and will be the competition’s highest-paid player, was asked about the situation on Saturday while captaining England at the T20 World Cup. “Pakistan have been a great cricket nation for many years,” he said. “There’s some amazing cricketers and they bring some great crowds as well. It would be a shame to not see some of the Pakistan players in there and make this tournament and competition even better.”
Brook, who has told Sunrisers he will not continue as captain this summer, added that his focus remained on the World Cup but that the reports were disappointing. “My main focus at the minute is to play the T20 World Cup … That part of The Hundred is above me and whatever they decided to do is up to them.”
Former England captain Michael Vaughan was more direct, posting on Friday: “The ECB need to act fast … they own the league, and this should not be allowed to happen … The most inclusive sport in the country is not one that allows this to happen.”
The four franchises without IPL affiliations are London Spirit, Birmingham Phoenix, Trent Rockets and Welsh Fire. The ECB cannot compel any team to select a particular player, but it can refer a franchise to the independent cricket regulator (established after the 2023 Equity in Cricket report) or impose its own sanctions if evidence of systematic exclusion emerges.
The issue reflects a pattern that has existed since 2009, when Pakistan players last appeared in the IPL because of diplomatic tensions between the two countries. No Pakistani has featured in South Africa’s SA20 since its launch in 2023, where all six teams are owned by IPL groups, including the four now involved in The Hundred. In the UAE’s ILT20, franchises controlled by the owners of MI London and Southern Brave have signed players from 15 other nationalities over four seasons, but none from Pakistan, while the American-owned Desert Vipers have signed eight.
Teams will submit preliminary lists of interest this week, reducing the field to a longlist of fewer than 200 players who will go forward to the auction – the first of its kind in the UK after the tournament abandoned the draft system following external investment. Squads will range from 16 to 18 players with a salary cap and collar in place; the men’s salary pot has risen 45% to £2.05m per side, and the women’s has doubled to £880,000.
The ECB’s letter is understood to have stressed that any blanket decision based on nationality would breach the competition rules. The County Cricket Members’ Group said it expected both the ECB and county boards “to hold private partners accountable if there is any reason to believe the non-selection of Pakistan players was a blanket decision based on nationality”.
Whether the reminder proves sufficient to change behaviour remains to be seen. For now, the governing body has signalled that it is watching closely as cricket’s newest, most commercially ambitious domestic competition confronts the same geopolitical fault lines that have shaped the global franchise landscape for more than a decade.
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