The draft for the tenth edition of the PSL will take place on January 11. The date of the draft is later than the PSL draft has historically taken place, although this is partly due to the window for the tournament being pushed back a month; it will now take place in a four-week slot between early April and mid-May, with the PCB no longer seeing a clash with the IPL as a no-go area.
While no further details have been announced regarding the players’ availability, the draft is likely to heavily feature players who were not sold in the IPL auction. One of the factors that influenced the PSL’s move into the IPL’s slot was the greater degree of certainty that players not on the IPL would be available due to the almost complete lack of international tournaments during that period.
At the IPL this year, David Warner, Kane Williamson, Akeal Hosein, Jonny Bairstow, Adil Rashid and Keshav Maharaj were among the players not sold, and while many may have had international commitments during the PSL’s window in other years, it will not be the case this time.
This does not guarantee that all these players will be available for the PSL. The England Cricket Board (ECB) is currently embroiled in a dispute with the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) after they announced that they would not issue NOCs for first-class cricketers to play in any overseas league apart from the IPL, which offended along with the domestic season. While the T20 Blast, which starts on May 29, will not clash with the PSL, the Counties Championship, which starts on April 4, almost certainly will. What the terms of any decision are is likely to have a significant impact on the PSL, which has historically drawn overseas talent quite heavily from England.
The move into the 2022 IPL window, first reported by Pakinomist, is one that the PCB is looking to make permanent as it tries to move away from the increasingly cramped December-March window in which it currently operates, where it not only clashes with four other T20 leagues but also a busy international cricket calendar. By contrast, the move to the April to May window means little or no full-member international cricket and only the IPL, which officials acknowledge it cannot compete with but can try to coexist with. And if, as expected, the PSL admits two new teams from 2026, there is still potential to accommodate a longer season in that window.
In the medium term, it will also help the PSL avoid being played almost exclusively in Ramadan, as would have been the case in 2025. As part of the lunar calendar, Ramadan starts ten days earlier each year on the Gregorian calendar, so it would clash with with the PSL’s usual February-March window for the next few years. Ramadan not only affects game times and crowd attendance, it’s also a big window for advertising; playing PSL in Ramadan would affect advertising and sponsorship revenue for the league.
The decision to change the window was by no means one that met with universal agreement. Pakinomist understands that a number of franchise owners were skeptical, if not outright opposed to the move at the time. However, the decision did not necessarily require the support of the franchises, as the PSL Board of Directors had the authority to make a unilateral decision on the matter.
