“ICC should think of not giving leagues to everybody” – Salman Butt: Salman Butt, a former captain of Pakistan, noted the exponential growth in franchise-based tournaments in recent years.
Recent reports state that the International Cricket Council (ICC) is considering capping the proportion of foreign players in the starting XIs for these Leagues.
Butt responded to this by saying that the high council should cease sanctioning so many T20 leagues. He commented on his YouTube channel:
There will inevitably be leagues with international players in nations that don’t even have a single team of their own and have ex-pats make up the majority of their squads. The ICC could consider denying leagues to everyone instead of considering placing a cap on foreign players because their own players aren’t qualified to play because they don’t match the standards.
According to the Telegraph, an ICC working group has recommended that in franchise-based leagues, a team’s starting XI should only contain a maximum of four players.
Players who have given up playing international cricket are also included. More than four foreign players are presently permitted in the starting XI of Major League Cricket, Caribbean Premier League (CPL), and international league T20.
Salman Butt: “All leagues cannot have the same status”
Salman Butt went on to say that the ICC has to think about creating several league tiers, implying that not all competitions ought to have the same standing.
Butt emphasized that not every player should compete in every league. A 38-year-old man spoke:
Only a set number of leagues should exist each year. To determine which players will play where in leagues, they need fix the tiers. The status of each league cannot be the same. There shouldn’t be a league for every player.
A proposal that would require boards hosting leagues to pay a 10% release fee to the individual boards of foreign players each season is also being considered by the ICC working group.