How Much Money Does The PCB Make?
From the Blog FiveRupees - How Much Money Does The PCB Make? November 15th, 2010 By AKS The sorry tale of Zuqarnain Haider got sorrier still when the PCB decided, as it always does, to shift the blame and lay it sqaurely on the young man’s shoulders. Players and officials stepped in to support the PCB by perversely insinuating that Zuqarnain is not quite man enough. A Pakistani player was threatened to throw a match and either chose to flee or was asked to flee. The fault in either case lies entirely with the management. They are either so bloody inept and/or corrupt that a player facing a serious problem in a foreign country is not comfortable seeking their assistance or that their means of tackling this issue after being informed by the player was to ship the player out. So what should we do? Ahsan in an earlier post mentioned that ” it might serve everyone’s best interests if Pakistan is quietly banned from cricket for a year or two.” This should, so goes the theory, shame those with higher powers to intercede and perhaps revamp the entire structure of Pakistan cricket. Frankly, I thought the match-fixing saga was pretty damn shameful, not to mention politically damaging, and would’ve led to some serious changes yet nothing was done. So I don’t have high hopes on that count. But in the unlikely event that something is done to fix Pakistan cricket then one of the first things I’d like to see is the opening up of PCB’s accounts to public scrutiny and the PCB should be made to declare the details of every single commercial deal it has entered into. Fix the Board and you have a better chance of fixing the players. I say that because I see a striking similarity between the commercial affairs of the players and the board. The thing that bothered me the most about Mazhar Majeed, apart from his match fixing antics of course, was how shit a job he did as an agent for Pakistani players. For over a year, before being implicated in the match-fixing scandal, Mohammad Aamir was the hottest thing in world cricket. I don’t think it is unreasonable to question why he wasn’t being commercially exploited; his face should have been on every other billboard in Pakistan, peddling soap, mobile phones and cooking oil. And it’s not just Aamir; apart from Afridi, you hardly ever find Pakistani cricketers on TV. On the other hand if you look at any other cricketing nation, most notably the ones in South Asia, and you see cricketers pimping themselves out for anything and everything. Now it may be the case that Pakistani cricketers are not as marketable as cricketers from other countries. But isn’t it the job of an agent to make his clients more marketable? And surely this shouldn’t be an impossible task in a country with few other sporting icons. Seriously, if Lasith Malinga with his stupid hair can sell a fridge , and Brett Lee with his stupid song can sell flats , then Fawad Alam with his stupid, not quite pubescent moustache can certainly sell me a Wall’s Ice-cream and Razzak with his stupid…actually, Razzak’s awesome! Perhaps I’m misguided and agents representing Pakistani cricketers are hard working but it’s the players and the Pakistani economy that’s at fault. I would however e more convinced of this if these agents were based in Lahore and Karachi (you know cities where Pakistani cricketers are most in demand) rather than London and Dubai . At best these supposed agents are business managers who help our players siphon off their money off-shore, assist them in buying foreign property, etc. At worst, they help our players make easy mone y; why work in a commercial when you can bowl a no-ball and make the same money? The PCB’s commercial affairs are eerily familiar. The PCB has two long-term sponsors: Pepsi and Ten Sports, but outside of these legacy partners, it has very few sponsorship deals. Its only other long term partner is Boom Boom, a recently launched sports equipment company; whereas recent home eries have been sponsored by Cool n Cool and the Chapal Group, which are hardly household names. There are three possible reasons for the PCB’s shambolic commercial performance: 1) The people in charge of handling commercial matters aren’t very good; 2) The contracts with Pepsi and Ten Sports are restrictive; or 3) Contracts are dished to the highest bidder briber. So, either the PCB is extremely inept or simply corrupt. And it’s not all about making money, it’s about creating an image. Cricketers are amongst the few global ambassadors Pakistan has (Salman Ahmed doesn’t count) and it would be nice to see the cricket team behaving honourably or doing something positive. I turn again to Sri Lankan cricketers, here’s Sangakara in a Unicef video raising awareness about kids with HIV in S. Africa, and Jehan Mubarak speaking up against domestic violence. How many times have you seen a Pakistani cricketer go on the air and raise his voice on an important issue? Yes, the cricketers could themselves do more and not be so bloody greedy; there is absolutely no excuse for fixing a match. But they aren’t the only ones to blame, not when the entire structure of Pakistan cricket is rotten. … Five Rupees
Winners…
From the Blog seedabrain - Winners… November 15th, 2010 The biggest winners in life and in love are people who have made each mistake once and only once. They also develop long arms so they can give themselves a daily pat on the back for the things they did well. Always learn from your mistakes and take yime to acknowledge your successes! seed a brain
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