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Why Multan Sultans under PCB is incompetent governance and a conflict waiting to explode?

Akshita Patel

PCB made a mess with Multan Sultans [Source: @aliktareen, @cricketroom_/X.com]PCB made a mess with Multan Sultans [Source: @aliktareen, @cricketroom_/X.com]

For nearly a decade, the PSL sold itself as a privately driven, professionally run product. It’s imperfect, chaotic at times, but steadily maturing. 

That illusion cracked the moment the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) decided it would run a franchise itself.

Multan Sultans, once a model of stability and ambition under businessman Ali Tareen, now sit under direct PCB control for PSL 11. 

Officially, this is being framed as a temporary arrangement. In reality, it is a governance failure dressed up as a necessity and a conflict of interest waiting to explode.

How did the mess come to this?

This mess did not appear overnight. It was engineered through months of inaction, ego clashes, and poor crisis management.

Ali Tareen’s fallout with the PCB was ugly, public, and deeply personal. Accusations flew both ways. Legal notices replaced conversations. Sarcastic apology videos replaced dialogue.

At no point did the PCB choose urgency or feel the need to act maturely in resolving a dispute involving one of its most valuable franchises.

While five other teams quietly renewed their agreements, Multan Sultans were left in limbo. No renewal offer. No serious mediation. No contingency plan.

By the time Tareen formally exited on December 31, the PCB had backed itself into a corner. It had neither repaired the relationship nor lined up a buyer. The result? The regulator became the operator, something no serious league willingly allows.

Regulator and participant - A line crossed by PCB?

The fundamental problem is that a cricket board cannot be both referee and player.

The PCB now controls scheduling, regulations, disciplinary processes, commercial decisions and one of the teams competing in the league. Even if every decision is made in good faith, the optics are disastrous.

How are other franchises supposed to trust the system when one team reports directly to the same authority governing the competition? Who resolves disputes if Multan feels aggrieved? 

Who ensures fairness when player availability, replacement approvals, or budget flexibilities come into play?

This isn’t about corruption accusations. It’s about credibility. And credibility, once damaged, is hard to restore.

The coaching conflict nobody wants to address

To add to this, the conflict deepens further with reports that Pakistan’s senior national team head coach Mike Hesson has been approached for a role at Multan Sultans.

This is not a minor detail. It cuts to the core of professional boundaries. In established cricket systems, national coaches do not hold operational roles in franchise teams run by the same board. 

Ever seen Rahul Dravid, Ravi Shastri or Gautam Gambhir featuring in IPL during their coaching tenure with Team India? Never.

Because such conflict muddies accountability, compromises neutrality, and raises inevitable questions about player management, selection biases, and divided loyalties.

Even discussing such an arrangement is a sign of how casually lines are being crossed because there is no independent owner to say no.

PCB conveniently chose ego over the PSL institution

The most damaging aspect of this saga is the sense that ego outweighed institutional interest.

At multiple points, the PCB could have de-escalated. It could have negotiated with Ali Tareen and addressed his hesitations. If not Tareen, they could have found interim buyers or structured an emergency sale. 

Instead, it chose silence, legal threats, and delay, somehow expecting that things would resolve themselves.

Now, having failed to act on time, the board presents itself as the saviour stepping in to “stabilise” Multan Sultans. But stability born out of incompetence is not leadership. It is damage control.

The irony is hard to miss. The PCB insists it had no option but to run the franchise, yet this option exists only because of its own failures.

A dangerous precedent for the PSL

Once a governing body manages a team, even temporarily, the door is open. What happens the next time an ownership dispute arises? Or a sponsor pulls out? Or a franchise misses a payment deadline? Does the PCB step in again?

Leagues survive on predictability, trust, and clean separation of powers. This move weakens all three.

PSL 11 may pass without a scandal. Multan Sultans may even perform well. But governance is not judged by outcomes alone. It is judged by processes. Right now, the process looks rushed, reactive, and driven by pride rather than planning.

The PCB didn’t just inherit a problem. It created one. And by placing itself at the centre of it, it has turned a franchise dispute into a league-wide credibility test. One that PSL cannot afford to fail.