Cricket: A brilliant journey for Pakistan Super League (PSL), says Karachi Kings owner

Gulf News

Karachi Kings owner Salman Iqbal recounts the league’s journey over six years  Read the full story here:  Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  #Cricket #PakistanSuperLeague #Pakistan

Transcript

00:00I think we have worked very hard to bring PSL where it is right now.

00:05With me today we have got a very special guest, Mr. Salman Iqbal. He is the founder of Karachi

00:11Kings, the current champions and he's also a TV mogul in Pakistan. He's the founder and CEO of

00:17ARY Digital Network. From that tentative start of the first edition in the UAE in 2015,

00:25the journey of PSL, if you can describe in a few words because you are a digital part of it.

00:31PSL has been a very very interesting journey for all the franchise owners, especially the first

00:37four franchise owners who started this league back six years ago. It was very difficult to

00:42bring in PSL in Pakistan because people said that because of PSL not happening in Pakistan,

00:47it's no use to have PSL. We with the previous chairman of PCB, Najab Sethi, we worked really

00:53hard to bring in PSL into Pakistan. Now we have the tournaments happening all over Pakistan which

00:58is a very very big achievement. Once Pakistan Super League got underway and over the years,

01:03you did a gradual shift. Initially, you took the final there, I think the three matches there,

01:09then you increased the number of matches. Then last year we had the whole edition,

01:13this year also the same thing. How much of this has really helped Pakistan ending the

01:19cricketing isolation? The overseas teams are back there today, South Africa is back,

01:24Sri Lanka is back. Then PSL must have also played a big part. PSL, I think played a huge role in

01:30bringing international cricket back to Pakistan. Security protocols which we have for PSL are the

01:34same protocol that we have for other international matches. When first time we moved PSL to Pakistan,

01:39which is to Lahore, we had two semi-finals and one final in Lahore. We literally could not find

01:44international players who were willing to come to Pakistan, especially to Lahore. At that time,

01:48I remember we had Sangakkara as the captain of Karachi Kings. We had to opt him out for that

01:53match against Peshawar Zalmi in Lahore. We had to go with a new captain. Sangakkara was hit in

01:59that bus which happened in Pakistan-Lahore. He was quite sceptic of Pakistan. But then the second

02:04PSL happened, we had few matches more in Karachi and in Lahore. Everybody was there. Every top

02:10international players were there. When they went back home to their respective countries and

02:14respective boards, they told about the security, they said what happened to them and then

02:18opened floodgates for Pakistan cricket back in Pakistan. Just looking at this year's edition

02:23in particular, how difficult was the protocol to convince the establishment that yes, we can do it?

02:29The big decision was last year when we had the semi-finals and finals which were not being

02:34played. That was the biggest judgment that we had to make as the PSL franchises and as PSL and as

02:39SPCB. When that went so smooth and then we saw that other countries are doing non-stadium,

02:48non-crowd in stadium matches, we discussed it with the current government, we had discussed

02:53with the security. The thing is in Pakistan is we have pandemic and then we have a security thing

02:57that we have to take care of. If you invite a thousand people or you invite 10,000 people,

03:01the security has to be the same. But for the last 3-4 matches which I have seen in the stadium,

03:05it's just unbelievable. We have amazing SOPs, people are scattered around, they are not allowed

03:11to gather in one place. The movement inside the stadium and outside the stadium has become so

03:15smooth. So, I think now we are there. It's a sad part that PSL has moved to Pakistan but it's now

03:20happening with 20% of the crowd. You've got PSL, you've got IPL, you've got Big Bash. I would say

03:27that you know these are the big three kind of you know in terms of the franchising leagues.

03:32Where would you keep PSL? Where do you see the room of improvement you know where you can

03:37you know maybe with a number of teams because everything else has kind of fallen into place

03:42and it has a settled look now. I think we have worked very hard to bring PSL where it is right

03:46now and we believe it's the second largest league in the world because if you look Big Bash is not

03:51owned by owners, it's owned by the board. So, the same formula which we have is IPL and PSL. Of

03:55course, IPL is the biggest. There's no doubt about it in anybody's mind. PSL I think is the second

04:00largest league being watched around the world. We have worked really hard to be where we are. Now,

04:06we get big international players coming to Pakistan. We have names of Chris Gayle and

04:10everybody. First time after a long time we had the Awanis coming to Pakistan. Kaachi King has

04:14Noor Muhammad. We have Muhammad Nabi. Rashid Khan is with Lahore Calendars. We had Ian Morgan who

04:20came to Pakistan once. I think we are there but now what we have to work hard is to get the revenue

04:27stream of PSL to the level that we were thinking it to be. I think if there was no pandemic we

04:33would have broken even and come to a great financial position but now after the pandemic

04:38it's completely a different game now. Plus, Gautam, it's such an exciting thing to play in your

04:43hometown. We used to hear from people, players who used to come from IPL and they used to say that

04:48you know I played for Mumbai, I played for Chennai. Oh my god, the crowd was so amazing. We couldn't

04:53feel that crowd in Sharjah in Dubai. We didn't have packed stadiums. The first match I played

04:57against Quetta for the first time in National Stadium with 35,000 noisy crowd, I then actually

05:04felt that yes PSL is now where it is. Initially when we bought the team, nobody thought that PSL

05:10will do well. We had so many negative press on PSL that we as franchise owners actually disheartened

05:17might not be able to bring it where it was but suddenly the first year when PSL happened it has

05:21become so big now that every big businessman wants to own a team.

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