PCB unhappy with Babar, Shaheen; to revisit players' social media policy

The Pakistan Cricket Board is not happy with former skipper Babar Azam and the current national T20 skipper Shaheen Shah Afridi participating on a space with fans conducted on social media platform 'X'.

The Q and A sessions on 'X', formerly Twitter did confirm the popularity of Babar despite losing the captaincy as his session drew more than 20,000 fans while Shaheen's Q and A session was joined by around 4000 fans.

But a source in the PCB said the decision by the two senior players to go ahead with the social media sessions obviously arranged by their agent had not gone down well with the PCB.

"The PCB will look to revisit some of the clauses that the centrally contracted players need to adhere to," the source said.

"The clauses covering the social media activities of contracted players are now being reviewed again by the board because it is concerned such public Q and A sessions could result in unnecessary controversies,” he said.

The PCB and players have been at loggerheads over the usage of social media and the NOCs issues for foreign T20 leagues since last year.

The fact that the PCB has a fourth Chairman since December 2022 has not helped matters and the source said this has led to lack of clarity between the players, their agents and the board.

"Every PCB chairman has tried to run the board in his own way and in some cases, even ignored the written clauses of the central contracts and given special permissions to players in the past 12 months," the source added.

The source said the new chairman Mohsin Naqvi had asked for details about the central contracts with the players and also asked for transcripts of all interviews and social media content of players for the last few months.

"Naqvi clearly wants a revised media policy for players and for this the PCB could revise some clauses of the central contracts," the source said.