Pakistan Stars Wait as PCB Holds Nepal League Clearances

Dr. Annelies De Vos · 2026-10-26

Cricket fans in Kathmandu are bracing for a strange opening week. The Nepal Premier League was supposed to start Monday with a handful of Pakistan's biggest T20 names in the mix. Instead, those players are stuck in limbo, waiting on paperwork that hasn't arrived. Here's the short version: the Pakistan Cricket Board hasn't issued no-objection certificates (NOCs) for the tournament. And it's not just new applicants caught in the mess. According to reporting from Cricinfo, even players who'd already received clearance were told their permission is now on hold. ### What's Actually Happening With the NOCs The league runs from October 26 to November 21, with eight teams playing all their matches in Kathmandu. Several Pakistan players have already landed in the Nepali capital. Others were packed and ready to fly but have paused their travel plans until the board makes up its mind. The PCB hasn't responded to requests for comment, so nobody knows for sure what's driving the delay. Which brings us to the rumor everyone's whispering about. ### The $25,000 Question People connected to the NPL say the PCB wanted a fee in exchange for issuing the certificates. The figure being floated? Around **$25,000 per Pakistan player**. That's a big claim, and it's worth being careful here. There's no written record confirming the league ever received such a demand. It's also unclear whether money is the real obstacle at all. Neither the board nor the league has said anything publicly, so right now this is all secondhand. Still, it's the kind of detail that makes you pause. A cricket board charging a toll for players to appear in a foreign league isn't exactly standard practice. ### The Players Caught in the Middle The Pakistan contingent is no joke. It includes T20 captain Sahibzada Farhan, who just smashed 76 against Sri Lanka in the third T20I in Rawalpindi on October 13. Haider Ali, Hunain Shah, Hussain Talat, Iftikhar Ahmed, Hasan Ali, and Usama Mir round out the group. Here's the thing that makes this whole situation more frustrating: none of these players are part of a Pakistan squad that overlaps with the league dates. There's no international commitment blocking them. On paper, there's no obvious reason to hold them back. ### The Contract System That Was Supposed to Help Earlier this year, the PCB rolled out a new central contract structure that splits white-ball and red-ball cricket. One category, called format track D, is built for T20 specialists. Under those rules, players in that track can play as many T20 leagues as they want, as long as the tournaments don't clash with international duty. Sounds clean, right? Except the PCB hasn't said publicly which players fall under which track. It also hasn't confirmed whether the new system is even active yet. So the very framework meant to clarify things has added another layer of fog. What we do know: none of the players named for the NPL currently figure in Pakistan's ODI or Test plans. That should make this simple. It hasn't. ### What Happens Next The tournament starts Monday. Teams that signed Pakistan players are holding their squads open, waiting on a decision from the board before they can finalize anything. If the certificates don't come through in time, those rosters get reshuffled fast. For the players, it's a waiting game they can't control. For the league, it's a credibility test in its opening days. And for fans, it's one more reminder that cricket's administrative side can be just as dramatic as anything that happens on the pitch. We'll keep watching this one. The clock is ticking, and the answer sits with a board that hasn't said a word.