No Pakistan player gets category A contract due to poor performances

The PCB has not awarded its most prestigious category A contracts to any Pakistan player for the 2025-26 season. Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan – the only two players in category A last season – have been demoted to B.

Pakistan’s Test captain Shan Masood, who was in the B category last year, is now in D, with ten players in each tier; this means the total number of centrally contracted players has increased from 27 to 30.

Fakhar Zaman, who missed out on a central contract for the first time in eight years in 2024 amid disciplinary hearings, is back in category B.

The decision to place no player in the highest category has been attributed to performance. ESPNcricinfo was told the team’s performance “did not lend favour to any player deserving a category A contract”.

It has been internally communicated that players can be promoted to category A only if their performances justify it. Both Babar and Rizwan had relatively unremarkable seasons over the past 12 months, as did the Pakistan side across formats.

In its official statement, the PCB pointedly stated the absence of a player in the highest band. “Notably, no player has been selected for Category A in this cycle,” the statement said.

There have been promotions elsewhere, though. Abrar Ahmed, Saim Ayub, Haris Rauf, Salman Ali Agha and Shadab Khan have all been promoted to category B.

Sufiyan Muqim, Hasan Nawaz and Mohammad Haris, each of whom did not have a central contract last year, have been awarded one – the first one in the cases of Muqim and Hasan. Meanwhile several players,dropped out of the central contract list altogether, notably Aamir Jamal, Kamran Ghulam, Mir Hamza, Irfan Khan Niazi and Usman Khan.

This is the final year of the landmark three-year deal the players reached with the PCB on central contracts.

It gave players their highest pay raises in history, and more notably, a fixed share of revenue from the PCB’s earnings at the ICC. The board has stuck to the same arrangement this time, only tweaking which categories particular players are placed in, as was previously agreed.

The contracts will be backdated to cover the period starting July 1, 2025, running for another 12 months before a revision can be made.  (ESPNcricinfo) 

Category B: Abrar Ahmed, Babar Azam, Fakhar Zaman, Haris Rauf, Hasan Ali, Mohammad Rizwan, Saim Ayub, Salman Ali Agha, Shadab Khan, Shaheen Shah Afridi

Category C: Abdullah Shafique, Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Nawaz, Mohammad Haris, Mohammad Nawaz, Naseem Shah, Noman Ali, Sahibzada Farhan, Sajid Khan, Saud Shakeel

Category D: Ahmed Daniyal, Hussain Talat, Khurram Shahzad, Khushdil Shah, Mohammad Abbas, Mohammad Abbas Afridi, Mohammad Wasim jr, Salman Mirza, Shan Masood, Sufyan Muqim