The PSL turns ten, carving its niche despite the turmoils of Pakistan cricket

On the flight home after he had bought the PSL's most expensive franchise, Karachi Kings, Salman Iqbal, the business and media tycoon, remembers being told by everyone he had made a mistake. A massive mistake. His employees at the ARY Group continued to tell him much the same. For days afterwards he couldn't sleep, disbelieving of what he had done. Biggest mistake of his business career? His life?

It's easy to forget the fraught, fragile place in which Iqbal had bought those rights in December 2015, for US $26 million (over 10 years). Talk of a Pakistan T20 league had been going on since 2008. Chairmen had come, chairmen had gone, opportunities peaked, opportunities troughed, but a league remained absent. The IPL was already booming, Bangladesh had started the BPL, West Indies the CPL. Pakistan was nearly seven years into its exile era. Even with a league, there was no timeline for when it might come home and no chance foreign stars would come to Pakistan. The PCB had not fully recovered from a period of leadership turbulence (between Najam Sethi and Zaka Ashraf). The BCCI was ignoring them, the Big Three had cast them aside.

Actually, it shouldn't be so easy to forget because, tenth season upon us (PSL X does have a zeitgeisty, and kind of adult, zing to it) and look around. Pakistan cricket is again - still? - a pretty fraught place. Struggling on the field. Not fully recovered from a period of administrative turbulence (featuring Najam Sethi and Zaka Ashraf). The BCCI ignoring them harder than ever (other than when it's making life difficult for them), the big three (now small-capped because they're more disingenuous about it) casting them aside.

Iqbal says the decision to buy Kings was not a business decision. It was one he made with his heart. To some extent, most, if not all, those first buyers, were the same. In that sense those decisions ring closer to Malcolm Gladwell's thesis about the owners of sports teams and the psychic benefits of owning those teams. It's not too long to read but in short he argues sports team are like works of art: there is a measurable value and then there is a value on top, the bit of owning it that speaks to the owner's heart: the psychic benefit.

Not that the PSL has been bad business. Not at all for the PCB. Indeed, as a report in the Pakistan business weekly Profit made clear last year, the league was the board's biggest source of revenue for five years until 2022 - essentially from its inception. A period where international cricket had not fully returned to Pakistan and the pandemic had upended the game. It is no longer the biggest slice. The ICC's current revenue distribution model, which has doubled the PCB's share to about $34 million annually, holds that distinction.

But here is a simple gauge of the PSL's enduring value to Pakistan cricket. The current broadcast deal for the league is worth over $30 million across two seasons, while the PCB's home bilateral rights, for a comparable period, recently went for approximately a fifth of that.

It hasn't always been so profitable for the franchises, though it wasn't entirely on them, because a financial model in which they paid franchise fees in US dollars but were earning in Pakistan Rupees was stacked against them. The Pakistan economy has been through a hell of a ride since then, and not a fun one. At the start of 2016, when the franchises came in, the rupee was around 105 to the dollar; it is currently around 280.

The franchises did eventually convince the PCB to fix that rate, as part of a new financial model they agreed on in 2021. A considerably bigger slice of the total league revenue is now shared between the franchises. They received financial help for two Covid-battered seasons. That has helped the situation. Not all franchises are consistently in the black, but they do each make approximately $4.5 million every season from their share of that central pool and their own commercial deals. In that time, a couple of the lower-value franchises have shown it is possible to run it as a profitable business and be successful.

What of its cricket impact? Well, what of it? It feels necessary to preface this, that the fortunes of Pakistan's cricket teams - past, present, future - are beholden to the PCB, not the PSL. Of course, the PSL helps players to evolve, to add some nous and some sheen. But it is not primarily how or where cricketers are found or, more relevantly to Pakistan, made sustainable. That will - and should - always be the PCB's job. And Pakistan's recent downturn in results is quite clearly linked to the actions of successive PCB administrations.

Still, if you insist on looking at records pre- and post-PSL, you'll not be able to make any definitive point. Pakistan are as they have always been. Eerily so, in fact. Here is the Pakistan men's team win-loss record in all international cricket in the ten years to the first PSL versus the years since: 1.130 (fifth-best among Full Members) vs 1.138 (seventh out of 12). They had the third-best win-loss record in T20Is in the decade before the PSL (1.50), and the fourth-best win-loss record in the years since (1.375). One white-ball trophy before, one since. ESPNcricinfo's statsguru doesn't have a metric ratio for talent unearthed against talent wasted, but I think we can all assume with confidence it's the same pre-PSL as it is post-PSL. Probably down to the last decimal point.

But you know what is tangible impact? Bringing international cricket back to Pakistan. To that end, has there been a more seminal game than the 2017 PSL final, with eight foreign players at the Gaddafi Stadium? A World XI visit followed later that year, then the PSL's qualifiers in Pakistan the following season, then more the next and then, bang, normalisation. Inestimably better earnings for a breed perennially among the world's lowest paid, is also tangible impact. Ditto better opportunities for an army of former cricketers, in coaching roles, or as support staff. And there is probably a fascinating study waiting to be done on the economic activity the PSL generates in the country every year.

To be honest, it would have been enough of an achievement to last 10 seasons, let alone any of this. What, after all, lasts that long in the corrosive environment that is Pakistan cricket? The PSL has survived exile. It has survived spot-fixing. Covid. Bad anthems. Seven different tenures of board heads, a couple of whom have inadvertently cannibalised it with their own vanity projects. More bad anthems. Four different prime ministers and two caretakers. The arrival of new, monied leagues. All of it to become, more or less, a fixture in the calendar which, in a country that happens daily with such dizzying force and speed, is an invaluable bit of groundedness.

The next ten seasons are probably even more important because there is so much still to do. Above all, a women's equivalent, the idea of which has been paid lip service to by some administrations and ignored by the rest. It may need franchise involvement, or for the PCB to do the initial heavy lifting but there is no doubt it needs to happen. Smaller steps, like taking the league to cities such as Peshawar and Faisalabad, can reap easy but meaningful rewards; and imagine the atmosphere in these venues, starved for so long of top-flight cricket.

The league will get bigger, with up to two more teams likely to be added from next season, which is about the right number for a one-sport country the size of Pakistan. Bids will be made once this season is over, and after a valuation exercise of the league has been completed. It's early but word is that interest is healthy among local businesses, and according to a couple of officials, a little foreign interest too.

The existing franchise, whose leases run out this season, will have to negotiate a new franchise fee if they want to continue (with a minimum increase of 25% baked in). Most, if not all, of them do, but foremost on their agendas should be to no longer be leaseholders in the league. They should push for franchise rights in perpetuity. The PSL is the house they have built over ten years, at considerable cost; they should not be treated as tenants.

These negotiations will not be straightforward, not least the prospect that existing franchises will have to share revenues with more teams going forward. The league's media and sponsorship rights are up for renewal and no guarantee there will be more money in the market in the next cycle (that not-fun Pakistan economic ride). And yet, despite this and given the ILT20 and SA20, the PSL will have to find a way to be more competitive for foreign players.

There will almost certainly be a push by franchises to have greater say in the running of the league - a common gripe, albeit expressed through varying degrees of frustration. This should be a surprise to nobody, given the PCB's statist approach to running cricket. As with Mr Tribbiani and his food, so it is that the PCB does not like sharing power or control with any stakeholder.

Which is why talk of setting up the PSL as a separate and somewhat independent entity is intriguing and important. It has already been incorporated as a private limited company, wholly owned by the PCB. But that is a first, tiny step. What shape it intends to take is far from certain right now. It could be incorporated abroad (bringing tax benefits). It could go public. Nothing could happen, because it's not like this separation hasn't been attempted before. But if it can somehow buffer itself from the instability and politicisation of the PCB that will be the biggest win. If, additionally, any change brings financial advantages, some operational ease, and a separate and long-term strategic vision, then those are significant perks. None of this will be easy, but it will be vital to get much of it right.

In light of which is this season's head-to-head scheduling clash with the IPL. It is in truth a bit of a red herring. The PSL is not competing with the IPL. It can't. This was a decision they forced upon themselves by the scheduling. A clear space from all the other leagues in that December-March window may yet bring some benefits and they will probably have to do it next season too, given the timing of the T20 World Cup, in February-March. It may be that they find it's better to move back to their traditional window, right into that leagues crunch.

It shouldn't matter. This next bit of the PSL isn't about competing with those other leagues. Instead, this bit should be - and apologies in advance for how corny and self-helpy this sounds - the PSL striving to become the best version of itself that it can be. That would be its greatest, most enduring feat.