Pakistan players refused A contract owing to poor performances with all of them either getting B,C, or D contracts.
No Pakistan players get category A contract due to poor performances.
No Pakistani player has been given one of the PCB’s most coveted category A contracts for the 2025–2026 campaign. The only two players in category A the previous season, Babar Azam and Muhammad Rizwan, have been dropped to B.
With ten players in each tier, the number of centrally contracted players has risen from 27 to 30, including Shan Masood, the Test captain of Pakistan, who was in the B category the previous season. Fakhar Zaman is back in category B after missing out on a central contract for the first time in eight years in 2024 due to disciplinary hearings.
Performance has been pointed as the biggest reason for the demotions, with the team’s performance “did not lend favour to any player deserving a category A contract”.
Players can only be promoted to category A if their performances warrant it, according to internal communications. Over the preceding 12 months, Babar, Rizwan, and the Pakistani team in all formats had comparatively uneventful seasons.
However, promotions have occurred elsewhere. Salman Ali Agha, Shadab Khan, Haris Rauf, Saim Ayub, and Abrar Ahmed have all been elevated to category B. Mohammad Haris, Hasan Nawaz, and Sufiyan Muqim, who each did not have a central contract the previous year, have each been given one; the first one was given to Hasan and Muqim. In the meantime, a number of players—most notably Aamir Jamal, Kamran Ghulam, Mir Hamza, Irfan Khan Niazi, and Usman Khan—completely disappeared from the central contract list.
This year marks the end of the players’ historic three-year central contract agreement with the PCB. In addition to giving players the largest pay increases in history, it also guaranteed them a set portion of the PCB’s profits at the ICC. This time, the board has adhered to the same structure, merely changing the categories in which certain players are categorised, as was previously decided. Before a change may be made, the contracts will be backdated to cover the period beginning July 1, 2025, and continue for an additional 12 months.