'IPL yet to respond on Pakistan participation' - PCB

The PCB has said it contacted the IPL to seek clarity regarding the participation of their players in cricket's most lucrative league, but the lack of response led once again to the exclusion of Pakistan's players from this year's event.

The IPL recently announced a list of players who will be put into the auction to be held in January. But the 416-strong list didn't contain any players from Pakistan. Effectively that means there will be no Pakistan players participating for the third year running in the IPL.

The PCB insists that they want their players to be a part of a league in which players from all full members are taking part. "The PCB stance is simple: we want our players to participate in the IPL," the board's chief operating officer, Subhan Ahmed, told reporters in Karachi. "We have on our own tried to contact the IPL to find the actual status. This was last week but we have yet to hear from them."

"From our end all the documentation that is needed, we undertake to provide them, whether that is permissions or No Objection Certificates (NOC). But their playing or not in this event is not in our hands.

"No player or franchise has approached us," Ahmed said. "They've actually revised the process of inducting players, so any player who wants to participate will have to get permission and NOC from their board. No player has approached us."

The IPL has made no official comment so far on why Pakistan's players are not involved in the auction. Ratnakar Shetty, the BCCI's chief administrative officer, had told AFP that the PCB had not forwarded any names for the auction. "The rules stipulate that a player must apply through his home board if he wanted to be put up for the auction. No names were received from Pakistan."

A number of Pakistan's leading players participated in the inaugural edition of the IPL in 2008, but they weren't given permission by the PCB in 2009 on security grounds after relations between the Indian and Pakistani governments deteriorated.

They were included in the auction for the 2010 event but the franchises refused to bid for them ultimately; investing in Pakistani players with ties between the two countries so unstable was said to be not economically feasible. That situation appears to have remained unchanged.

Since then only Mohammad Irfan, the near 7-foot left-arm paceman who debuted for Pakistan this summer, has been linked with a franchise, Kolkata Knight Riders, earlier in the year. But that has since fallen through.