The player draft for the 10th edition of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) will take place on January 11. The tournament will clash with the Indian Premier League (IPL) as the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has decided to shift the window of the PSL. PSL 2025 will likely be played in the four-week slot between early April and mid-May next year.
For the same reason, the player draft is also pushed back this time around. Even though there are no details released about the player availability yet, the unsold players in the IPL mega auction are expected to be in heavy demand. The likes of David Warner, Kane Williamson, Akeal Hosein, Jonny Bairstow, Adil Rashid and Keshav Maharaj among many others went unsold at the IPL mega auction.
The player availability has been a major issue in PSL previously but this time around, it is unlikely to happen with the tournament set to take place during the IPL window. Having said that, there is no guarantee of the availability of all players with the England Cricket Board (ECB) currently embroiled in a dispute with the Professional Cricketers' Association (PCA).
For the unversed, the ECB made it clear last month that they would not issue NOCs for first-class players to participate in any overseas league apart from IPL that clashed with the domestic season. In this aspect, the T20 Blast will get underway on May 29 and will not be clashing with the PSL. But the County Championship is starting on April 4 and will certainly clash with the T20 league.
Interestingly, all the PSL franchise owners were also not in agreement with PCB's decision to shift the league in the IPL window. According to a report in ESPNCricinfo, most franchises were skeptical of this move and had outright opposed it at the time.
