PCB Chairman Ijaz Butt

In what is surely the definition of an exercise in futility, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) plan to complain to the ICC about the fact that none of their players were bought at Tuesday's IPL auction.

Politics has been blamed for 11 Pakistani players missing out on potential contracts despite the fact that some franchises admitted to being wary after previously losing the players' services in the wake of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

PCB chairman Ijaz Butt has already expressed his disappointment at their exclusion despite Pakistan being the World Twenty20 champions, and has now promised to take the issue up with the ICC. Such an action will surely have no impact whatsoever, given that the IPL is a domestic tournament and therefore has little to do with the sport's governing body.

"We will be lodging a complaint with the ICC and I will personally table this issue at the next meeting of the ICC executive board on February 10," said Butt after a meeting with Pakistan's sports minister in Lahore.

"The IPL may be a private and commercial enterprise but this issue involves the pride of a nation and we are going to pursue it with the ICC."

Butt's sentiments were backed up by the sports minister Ijaz Jhakrani, who is viewing the issue seriously.
"How can they [IPL franchises] avoid bidding for players from the world champion team?" he said. "It's our unanimous decision to take up this issue at the highest forum and lodge our protest at the ICC."

The Indian government has distanced itself from the whole saga insisting they have nothing to do with the tournament, but Butt is eager to know just how political the franchise decisions were.

"They should tell us if franchises had reservations about signing Pakistani players because they were worried about security issues and availability of the players why were our players included in the auction in the first place," he said.

"If IPL franchise has so many issues with signing our players then why did the IPL first approach us to send them government clearances for the players?"

Cricket365