PCB announces the schedule of National T20 tournament

Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has announced the schedule of the National T20 tournament which will be contested between eight teams. The competition is all set to commence from November 11 and will go on until 26th of the same month. However, it is still not clear if the national players will take part in the tournament. Most of the players are signed with the franchises in the ongoing Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) and the teams are expecting them soon.

Two matches will be played every day and the first of them is scheduled between Karachi and Faisalabad. The round-robin games will end on November 24 after which the semi-finals and finals will be played on 25th and 26th of the same month.

The Men in Green are in the middle of a dream run currently and have won everything in the limited overs format. They are being led by Sarfraz Ahmed who took over the captaincy from Azhar Ali earlier this year. The players are in huge demand in franchise-based T20 leagues, especially bowlers who are amazingly skilful for the format. The likes of Hasan Ali, Shadab Khan, Mohammad Amir are playing in the different leagues since their triumph in Champions Trophy earlier this year.

What next for Pakistan?

Pakistan recently played against Sri Lanka in their adopted home in the United Arab Emirates. Though they lost the Test series by 2-0 to the visitors, the team came back with a roaring success in the limited overs series. They whitewashed the island nation in 5-match ODI series and three-match T20 International series. But they have no cricket scheduled until January next year when they will travel New Zealand for a series across all the three formats.

They were expected to feature in the ongoing season of BPL, but the board hasn’t allowed them so far citing the fitness tests as a reason. It remains to be seen though if they will play in the domestic tournament or PCB will allow them to play franchise cricket in the upcoming days. The players would be hoping to do the latter as they are being a huge amount of money and they would not want to miss that.

Here’s the complete schedule: