The trio can play in the BBL until December 28, however, a schedule the board said had been agreed bearing in mind “the workload of players and the future tours programme of the national men’s team.” That likely refers to their potential involvement in Pakistan’s T20I series with New Zealand after their tour of Australia, but those games don’t begin until January 12. At most, Rauf and Mir will end up playing five games for Melbourne Stars and Zaman four for Sydney Thunder.
“The PCB understands that this decision is in the best interests of all the stakeholders involved while balancing the importance of game time with workload management,” the board said.
The show cause notice is based on the alleged breach of clauses from the central contract which requires the cricketer to make themselves “available as and when required by the Board” and to “render professional cricketing services… diligently, faithfully and with utmost integrity”.
That Rauf was in consideration for the Australia series was a surprise in the first place, given that he has mostly been seen and groomed as a white-ball specialist since his emergence through a Lahore Qalandars’ talent hunt in 2017. But ESPNcricinfo understands Rauf had been sounded out about the possibility of some involvement in the Australia Test series during the World Cup in India. Pakistan’s then management envisaged using him for maximum impact across shorter spells, especially at a venue like Perth, where Pakistan play their first Test. Rauf was said to be sceptical even then but had not ruled it out.
That thinking was confirmed by Pakistan’s new captain Shan Masood who said before flying out to Australia that they wanted to use Rauf’s extreme pace across short spells as England had used Mark Wood in the Ashes a couple of seasons ago. Wood though has been managed by England as a red-ball option for a while, having now played 31 Tests and over 70 first-class games.
The administrative instability at the PCB has not helped the situation. When the idea of Rauf in Australia was first considered, the people talking to him were completely different to those now in charge: Hafeez has replaced Mickey Arthur as the team director (and is for now the replacement of Grant Bradburn as head coach) and Wahab has taken over from Inzamam-ul-Haq as the new chief selector, the fifth man in that post this year. Masood has taken over from Babar Azam as the Test captain.