Karachi Champions League (KCL) : Latif Launches Mega Cricket Tournament

by Owais Ehsan on February 3, 2010

With Pakistan Cricket going through endless humiliations, starting from the Poor form of the team, Ipl Snub, Afridi’s antics at Perth - there is at least some positive News coming out. Rashid Latif & Karachi City Government have join hands to launch the most lucrative club tournament in Pakistan’s History. Latif has long been thinking of launching a city-based Twenty20 league but finally decided it was time to act when Pakistan’s leading cricketers were snubbed at an Indian Premier League (IPL) player auction in Mumbai last month.

The Karachi Champions League, a Twenty20 league, for the leading clubs of the city will begin next week with Rs 10 million (around USD 117,200) as the top prize for the winners. The tournament, a brainchild of Latif and the Rashid Latif Cricket Academy (RLCA) will feature a number of Karachi-based international players, as well as a host of domestic cricketers. Younis Khan, Shahid Afridi, Khalid Latif, Fawad Alam, Khurram Manzoor and Sarfraz Ahmed, among others, will be playing.

“It was an old idea of mine, one that I had been working on. I am a big follower of English football and I love the history of clubs over there, like Chelsea and Fulham. We have so many old clubs in Karachi and we need to revive that club culture once again here.”

As a former Test cricketer, I regularly write and comment about the game but now I’m convinced that it is time for actions. Everybody talks about how the PCB has failed but is anyone ready to come forward to do anything concrete for Pakistan cricket? I must say that if all of us decide to do our bit then our cricket can really make great progress. We can do it. In fact, we are hoping that this project will attract enough support from all quarters to enable us to turn into an international league in the future.

Cricinfo further adds;

The idea was put into practice after Latif ran the idea by the city’s mayor Mustafa Kamal during what was supposed to be a five-minute meeting. “We ran the idea by him and he agreed after a minute,” Latif said. The prize money has been put up by Kamal’s city government; as well as the winning club getting Rs 10 million, the runners-up will receive Rs 5 million (around USD 58,900), the semi-finalists Rs 500,000 (around USD 5900) each and the quarter-finalists Rs 250,000 (around USD 2900). All told there is Rs 17 million (nearly USD 200,000) in prize money at stake, easily the most lucrative local tournament in the country’s history

At this point the question that comes to everyones mind is ‘Where is PCB’? why it is not taking any initiative, to the very least it could have helped Rashid Latif in staging this tournment and could have even helped in raising the prize money. It remains to be seen how his tournament would go through, and if it is successful than im sure PPL (Pakistan Premiere League) will be the next step. So i would like everyone to support this tournament in every possible way in the process making it a huge success. We at Pro-Pakistan congratulate Rashid Latif and all those who are part of this project for taking such a brilliant initiative.

Related Articles

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

1 Shoaib 02.13.10 at 7:06 pm

Allah O Akbar! We needed something like for a long time but the gutless PCB cant do crap. It will be a good chance for good players to show their cricket skills. Hope Pakistani cricket becomes like it was back in the old days instead of our players going to the neighborhood and get laid to get some shameless, undignified dollars to feed their families with.
Peace.

Leave a Comment

You can use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>