NEW DELHI: The Pakistan Cricket Board expresses discontent with the former captain Babar Azam and the current national T20 captain Shaheen Shah Afridi for their involvement in a fan interaction session on the social media platform ‘X’.
Although the Q&A sessions on ‘X,’ previously known as Twitter, affirmed Babar’s popularity with over 20,000 fans participating, and Shaheen’s session drawing around 4000 fans
A source within the PCB reveals that the decision by these senior players to proceed with the social media sessions, evidently organised by their agent, has not been well-received by the cricket board.
“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.
There has been ongoing discord between the PCB and players regarding the use of social media and the issuance of NOCs for foreign T20 leagues since the previous 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.
(With inputs from PTI)