Another winter, another reshuffle. The Pakistan Cricket Board has confirmed a leaner domestic programme for 2025-26, headlined by an eight-team Quaid-e-Azam Trophy and the quiet removal of the Champions Cup after just one season.
The essentials first. Only regional sides will contest the first-class QeA Trophy, which runs from 22 September to 7 November. Every team plays each other once – 29 matches in total – at four grounds split between Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The PCB has not explained why the entire competition is locked to the twin cities, though travel costs and television logistics are the obvious guesses.
Big-city squeeze
By reducing the field from 18 to eight, the board has inadvertently parked both Karachi Blues and Karachi Whites in the second-tier Hanif Mohammad Trophy. They finished near the bottom of last year’s table and, at the time, had no inkling that a dozen sides would be jettisoned en bloc. The only way back is to finish in the Hanif’s top two, a prospect that has ruffled feathers on the coast. Karachi has long been a production line for national talent; missing from the marquee event would be a jolt to local players and sponsors alike.
A short, blunt statement framed the revamp as a push for “increased competitiveness”. On paper, fewer fixtures should lift standards, yet the domestic scene has been rebuilt so many times that even seasoned followers are losing count.
Champions Cup shelved
Last season’s Champions Cup – trumpeted as a high-performance bridge between domestic and international cricket – has vanished altogether. A 50-over and a T20 version were played in 2024-25, but the promised first-class leg never got off the ground. The concept, sold with fanfare and a healthy budget, is not mentioned anywhere in the new calendar.
Departmental cricket survives
Separate President’s Trophy and President’s Cup tournaments remain for departmental teams, preserving a long-standing, if often debated, strand of Pakistan’s domestic fabric. The board insists the split structure allows both regions and employers to field sides without clogging up a single competition.
National T20 Cup tweaked
Twenty teams will still chase the National T20 Cup, but only ten reach the main draw. A qualifying phase – “to further enhance competitiveness” says the board – will spit out the two survivors who join the eight automatic entrants. That Super Ten segment is pencilled in for Faisalabad from 1-12 March 2026.
Official view
“We are pleased to unveil a domestic structure that places merit, opportunity and competitiveness at its core,” PCB chief operating officer Sumair Ahmed Syed said. “The 2025-26 season has been designed to provide a clear pathway for teams and players to progress based on performance, not reputation.”
Reading between the lines
The principle is sound: smaller fields, sharper contests, clear promotion and relegation. The execution is where sceptics circle. Players learned only in June that wholesale relegation was on the cards, and coaches privately question whether a five-week first-class block – all on northern pitches – gives batters a broad enough examination.
Financial considerations also linger. Central-tier fixtures in one region reduce costs, yet sponsors attached to sides now in the Hanif Mohammad Trophy may look elsewhere. Backers from Karachi, Sialkot or Bahawalpur will struggle to justify spend if their logos never reach live television.
Still, Pakistan’s domestic system has rarely stood still. If the latest shuffle delivers tighter cricket and smoother pathways, stakeholders will forgive the upheaval. If not, expect another redrawing of the map this time next year.
