PCB's BoG approves 2020-21 budget.

LAHORE -- The Board of Governors (BoG) of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Friday morning held their second meeting of the year, 58th overall, via a videoconference under the chairmanship of Ehsan Mani.

The BoG approved a PKR 7.76 billion operating expenditure budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year, which is a 10 per cent reduction from the 2019-20 budget as part of the PCB's austerity, robust financial management and belt-tightening exercise.

Without compromising and reducing any activities from the 2019-20 activities, the PCB has allocated 71.2 per cent of the overall budget for cricket-related activities. This is to ensure that despite tough financial situation due to the Covid-19 pandemic, cricket remains unaffected and the PCB continues to invest in the future.

The allocated 71.2 per cent cricket budget includes 25.2 per cent for domestic cricket (events and players/match officials/player support personnel contracts and High Performance Centre costs), 19.3 per cent for international cricket (home/away series and player contracts), 5.5 per cent for women's cricket (home/away cricket and player contracts), 19.7 per cent for HBL PSL 2021 and 1.5 per cent for Medical and Sport Sciences.

While forecasting shortfall in revenues due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has left the fate of revenues from international events hanging in balance and may also affect PCB's commercial programme, the BoG has agreed to continue investment on infrastructure development by approving a PKR1.22billion budget for capital expenditure, a reduction of approximately PKR800million from 2019-20.

PCB Chairman Ehsan Mani: 'We have followed a strict cost-benefit and value for money policy while preparing this budget taking into consideration the economic situation due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The budget caters for all critical business of cricket activities, while the nice-to-have activities have been set aside as part of our cost-cutting measures and to protect our reserves for the future.

DOMESTIC PLAYER

CONTRACTS FOR 2020-21

PCB Chief Executive Wasim Khan briefed the BoG on the new 12-month merit-based domestic player contracts for the 2020-21 season, that will come into effect from August 1, 2020. According to the new monthly retainer structure, the PCB will again offer 192 leading domestic players (32 from each of the six Cricket Associations) performance-based contracts, but instead of paying a flat monthly retainer of PKR50,000 to all players, this season...