Karachi, Nov 25 (IANS) The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is considering slashing the monthly payments of elite cricketers as per the central contracts system which is to be revised after Dec 31, 2008.
Sources in the PCB told IANS Tuesday that the Board's top brass is planning to carry out an austerity drive to cut down ballooning costs and intends to cut down the salaries of top cricketers as well as the national selectors.
The Board awarded central contracts to 15 elite cricketers this summer for a six-month period and announced at that time that new 12-month central contracts will be given to the players from Jan 1, 2009.
Two of those cricketers - Mohammad Yousuf and Mohammad Asif - were later dropped from the list. Yousuf was axed after he joined the breakaway Indian Cricket League (ICL) while Asif's name was erased from the Board's payrolls after he tested positive for banned anabolic steroid nandrolone while featuring in the Indian Premier League (ICL) in May.
The current contracts were awarded at a time when Nasim Ashraf was the PCB chairman. Ashraf resigned in August and was later replaced by Ijaz Butt as the Board chief.
Butt, a former Pakistan Test opener, has inherited a financially weak PCB and is now taking measures to cut down expenses that run in millions of dollars annually.
The Board recently laid off over 60 employees and is planning to down size more in the coming weeks.
The players currently on contract with the PCB are divided into three slabs and get a monthly retainer of up to Rs 250,000.
Following is the list of players on central contracts:
Category A: Younis Khan, Shoaib Malik, Misbah-ul-Haq. Monthly retainer Rs.250,000.
Category B: Kamran Akmal, Sohail Tanvir, Shahid Afridi, Salman Butt, Umar Gul.
Rs.175,000
Category C: Abdul Rehman, Yasir Arafat, Rao Iftikhar, Danish Kaneria, Fawad Alam. Rs.100,000.
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