Domestic cricket structures around the world are designed to provide the best possible emulation of the sport at the international level as it is here that the cricketers are polished into the final products and their performances at this level determine who amongst them go on to represent the country in arenas where the lights shine the brightest.

The health of a country’s first-class cricket usually serves as a barometer of the performances of its Test sides. Therefore, the fact that Australia, India, England and New Zealand have been the most consistent teams of late is not a surprise for any cricket follower as they boast quality first-class structures.

India, who played the finals of the ICC World Test Championship in 2021 as well as 2023, have turned into a behemoth since the turn of the century.

Their unparalleled commercial value and the launch of the Indian Premier League in 2008, which opened revenue floodgates, have often been credited for their rapid rise. But, what is often ignored is how the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) continued to prioritise their first-class competitions, namely the Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy and Z R Irani Cup.

New Zealand and Australia, the winners of the 2021 and 2023 iterations of the Test Championship, have two of the longest-running first-class tournaments in the form of Plunket Shield and Sheffield Shield, both of which go back more than a century.

Meanwhile, England, who currently lead the white-and-red-ball revolution and had a dominating whitewash over the Green Team in Pakistan in December of last year on what was their first Test tour since 2005-06, have one of the most prestigious first-class competitions in County Championship, which has routinely attracted cricketers from all around the world.

Pakistan, on the other hand, have remained arguably the most inconsistent country in terms of domestic first-class structures.

In the last 10 years alone, Pakistan has chopped and changed their first-class tournaments several times.

The board ran parallel first-class competitions — Quaid-e-Azam Trophy and President’s Trophy — for regions and departments in 2013-14 and then clubbed regions and departments together in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy in 2018-19.

The formats of these tournaments have also varied with the changes in the number of participating teams.

The 2019-20 season saw a complete overhaul in the domestic structure that merged 16 regions into six cricket associations and did away completely with the department-based teams. That arrangement lasted until last year when a new government with its own sporting ideas took over.

The PCB has also experimented with the ball maker, using the Grays, Kookaburra, and Dukes manufactured balls, and even tried to tweak ground conditions by laying grass-laden pitches.

Every administration — and there have been quite a few over the last decade — has had its own logic and reasoning to defend its version of first-class structures, but there was never a change in the rules.

Needless tinkering

In one of the most bizarre divergences from the traditions, the PCB has changed the playing conditions for first-class cricket with the launch of the President’s Trophy that sees the return of department teams to Pakistan’s domestic structure for the first time since the 2018-19 season.

The very purpose of first-class cricket is to prepare cricketers for Test cricket, but the alterations have changed the very fabric of the format.

In a host of changes introduced to the tournament’s playing conditions — which at the time of writing this piece were yet to be published on the PCB’s official website — the first innings of the match are restricted to 80 overs.

Keep in mind that there is no over-restriction in Test cricket.

In another change, the captain of the batting side is now allowed to use the roller after the toss for up to seven minutes (not the case in Test cricket), and in case a team desires to declare their first innings, they face points penalty.

This is when a declaration is a genuine tactic deployed by teams to gain a tactical advantage in Test cricket.

Then there is the matter of middle-order batters, who are considered the backbone of any batting line-up.

It’s these batters who build an innings as the ball gets old and conditions — both up in the sky and down on the ground — are constantly changing as a day progresses. Teams often slot their best batters at the number four slot.

However, in the President’s Trophy, which began on December 16, the batters batting from four to seven could face only 41.1 per cent of the balls bowled in the first innings.

There is also no incentive for bowlers — individually and the fielding sides collectively — to attack as the ball gets older after the first 20-30 overs.

That’s because the overs limitation has effectively turned the first two days of the four-day match into 80 overs a side one-day event.

When wickets are hard to come by, the fielding side can simply resort to defensive tactics by bowling outside the batters’ arc and opening the fields.

Former Test cricketer Bazid Khan, who now works as a pundit, told Dawn.com: “Whenever there is a change in the playing conditions, they are publicised to the media but that was not the case this time and most of the people got to know about these changes when the matches commenced.

“Nowhere in the world is there a restriction of overs in first-class cricket. This step has done away with the concept of the second new ball. The element of spinners working out a batter in the middle part of the innings to get them out is also done away with, as they will rather look to stop the flow of runs.

“If a batter walks in the middle in the 70th over and has only 10 overs to bat, he will be throwing away his wicket, which is absurd in four-day cricket as the purpose of this format is to develop batters in such a way that they bat long,” he added.

A day after these playing conditions came into play, Pakistan were bowled out for 89 inside 30.2 overs, chasing a mammoth 450-run target, by Australia at Perth in the first of the three Tests.

On the final day of the first round matches, the PCB released an explainer which stated that “restricting first innings of teams to 80 overs is aimed at improving scoring rates in domestic cricket, revamping the current approach and developing an attacking style of play in line with modern-day cricket.”

However, the teams now have almost zero incentive to play the desired “attacking style of play” as breaching the 350-run mark, which means scoring at 4.375 an over, or bowling out an opposition in the first innings only accords one bonus point as per the President’s Trophy points system.

“There is an inherent flaw in the points system,” Muhammad Wasim, another former Test cricketer and national selector now working as PTV’s head coach, told Dawn.com.

“This structure provides only one point for scoring 350 runs in 80 overs, which is not attractive for anyone. Had it been two or three points, the teams would have targeted 350,” he said.

The recent Quaid-i-Azam Trophy played between regions in September and October, awarded five points for going at 4.375 runs in 100 overs.

“There should not be a cap on the number of overs anyway,” Wasim further said.

“Honestly, I do not understand the purpose. After we (PTV) were bowled out for 60 odd, State Bank of Pakistan scored around 350. After their opener scored a century, the number two [three] and three [five] scored around 70 and 80. Their fourth [sixth] batter walked in around 70th over and fifth [seventh] walked in when only eight overs were left,” he added.

“If your openers or number three do not get out, how will you develop your middle-order since those batters will not get an opportunity to bat? Thus, you are actually asking a batting order to play in chunks — openers play 20 overs, the next batters play next 20 and so on. This is not how batters are developed.

“The bowlers will resort to defensive tactics and the desire to bowl an opposition out will be gone. In the last 20 or 30 overs, the fielding side will try to defend runs, rather than attack and get the batters out, because they know that the innings will come to an end anyway. The bowlers will only look for the wickets for the first 20 or 30 overs and then start to defend runs by keeping their fields open,” he said.

When it comes to the longer format, the toss plays a crucial role in determining how the match will pan out. The nature of the wicket on the first day is the basis around which the teams decide their strategies and whether they would bat or bowl.

The exercise of reading the surface often begins in the days leading up to the contests with each side searching for every possible clue to determine how the surface will behave.

The new playing conditions, however, provide an opportunity for the captain of the team batting first to tamper with the pitch conditions.

By having the pitch rolled up seven minutes after the toss — a concept completely alien to Test cricket — a batting captain can turn the surface docile, allowing his batters to bat more freely.

“You can make such additions according to your wishes, but what difference will it make?” Khan questioned.

“If a captain has taken a roller for seven minutes, what difference will it make in the end because his team will play for only 80 overs? You just want to do something artificial to project yourself,” he said.

The batters risk losing their prowess of negating the new ball in fresh conditions of day one as the captains could continue to opt for rollers after the toss.

Since there has been no official explanation behind the rules by any of the PCB officials — except for that one explainer — one can deduce that this change may have been brought to discourage the home teams from preparing green pitches that largely favour fast bowlers on the first morning.

But at the same time, there is no concept of home and away matches in the President’s Trophy and each of the three Karachi centres — National Bank Stadium, State Bank of Pakistan, and the UBL Sports Complex — host seven matches in as many weeks, depriving the ground staff the opportunity to prepare such spicy bowling conditions.

The poor state of wickets in Pakistan’s domestic cricket is nothing new for any follower of the game in the country, but Khan believes, that there are better ways of dealing with the matter than leaving it to the playing sides.

“I do not remember any centre getting banned for producing wickets where a match ended in two days or a team got out after posting a small score,” he said.

“You just want to organise the first-class cricket as a tick-the-box exercise. The focus is to finish the season within two months. Everywhere in the world, the season lasts for six months. Over here, if a player is struggling for form, he cannot work on it because there is a match every third day.

“This is not something which has happened today, but this has been happening since 1952.”

A point to note is that this year’s Quaid-i-Azam Trophy — an eight-region-based team event — began on September 10 with the final on October 22.

The ongoing seven department-based teams President’s Trophy is slated to be completed by January 31 after beginning late last week.

Unilateral decision

For a contest to be classified as first class, it needs to be at least three days long and must have two batting innings for each side, according to the ICC’s rules book.

When Dawn.com reached out to a senior ICC official to understand what constitutes a first-class match, it was told that a home board has the jurisdiction to determine that.

That these changes, however, were brought mid-season is baffling.

The PCB’s board of governors approve the playing conditions as per the norm. With the elections for the board of governors yet to be held, an ad-hoc management committee, appointed by the ministry for inter-provincial coordination, is somewhat replicating their role. Any amendments to playing conditions have always been subject to long and delicate deliberations.

But, it was not the case this time.

Interestingly, the PCB’s explainer of December 19 asked the pundits and fans “to be patient with their assessment of this domestic tournament” and promised that a decision on these revisions will be made at the conclusion of the tournament after “inputs from all the participants”.

That the board has hinted at the possibility of reversing these playing conditions is an indication that there is acceptance within the corridors of power that they have bungled things up.

And considering the history, it probably was just out of habit.