There's a small town in Northern California called Willow Creek, primarily known for its rumoured sightings of the mythical creature Bigfoot, a large, hairy primate believers insist walks among the woodlands. There has never been credible evidence of such a creature existing, but that hasn't stopped enthusiasts from fervently maintaining it exists, impervious to any arguments to the contrary.
Little more than a quirky anecdote, you might think, and one with no real consequence. But Bigfoot believers care deeply about maintaining the health of the ecosystem that nurtures it, and campaign to protect California's ancient redwood trees, a rare example of mainstream conservation and fringe belief existing in symbiotic congruity.
Which brings us, surprisingly neatly, to Pakistan's Champions One-Day Cup, starting Thursday and running until September 29. The PCB has waxed lyrical about its importance and the various benefits it will bring, at times as unconstrained by evidence as those in Willow Creek. It will provide Pakistan with a depth of fresh player talent, despite nearly all of the players involved already within the system. Performances will be analysable through data and statistics, though similar records also exist for previous domestic one-day tournaments. It will help Pakistan through their busiest home season in decades, even though the internationals are dominated by Test matches and this is a white-ball cricket.
But, like the Bigfoot belief, there's an unquestionable peripheral benefit; the hype around the tournament has brought a level of interest previously unthinkable for a local domestic event. This is effectively a Pakistan Cup with bells and whistles, but few beyond the most committed could tell you much about what happened at the 2023 iteration of that tournament, or even who ended up winning.
This time, all the stops have been pulled out. The prize money pool is nearly half that of the PSL, and the five mentors are collectively paid around an additional PKR 25 million per month, the sum total of their three-year contracts costing the board approximately PKR 900 million. For context, the winners of last year's Pakistan Cup - Peshawar - were awarded prize money of PKR 5 million, approximately the salary of one mentor for one month in this year's competition.
Just about every international Pakistan cricketer is available to play, with white-ball coach Gary Kirsten flying in, and red-ball coach Jason Gillespie joining later. The competition has been slotted into Pakistan's only available international window until the middle of April 2025, which is saying something because even the PSL, the PCB's real prestige project and largest money spinner for much of its existence, has to fight for space in an increasingly cramped cricket calendar. Next year, it must accept cohabiting alongside the IPL. The Champions Cup games will all be televised and live-streamed, and each of the five sides have dedicated media houses as official media partners. Artificial intelligence has been marketed as a key feature in the selection of squads.
Meanwhile, Faisalabad's Iqbal Stadium, once a prominent cricketing centre that has since fallen into dereliction, is undergoing a quiet gradual revival one this event is set to accelerate. The entirety of the Champions Cup will be held in the city, likely benefitting from renovation and construction works at the more mainstream centres in Lahore and Karachi. It last hosted international cricket in 2008, with the possibility of any more in the near future tangled up in messy wrangling between local administration and the PCB.
England's upcoming Test tour has demonstrated the urgent need for more hosting options for Pakistan, with Lahore and Karachi's unavailability miring the schedule in confusion and disarray. Reopening the Iqbal Stadium to its sporting possibilities with an event so coveted by the PCB can only help Pakistan as the board desperately looks to spread Test cricket out into smaller cities.
There are some curious and haphazard choices, though that in Pakistan cricket is hardly unique. The decision against aligning each of the five sides with city or region names makes it trickier to cultivate an identity. A late change of name from Wolves to Markhors for the Misbah-ul-Haq mentored side on the eve of the tournament casts light on the fluid nature of a competition the PCB is somehow both building from scratch and regenerating in its umpteenth edition. Three of the teams found sponsors on the day before, while two - at the time of writing - are actively looking.
The questions about financial sustainability have already been asked, and remain as pressing as they are unanswered. The scepticism about whether the Champions Cup represents a calculated change in strategy or an ephemeral vanity project, and concern over what it means for the board's commitment to the PSL, lingers.
But when the Panthers take on the Markhors tomorrow, the numbers who tune in will be orders of magnitude greater than those who watched Lahore Whites beat Lahore Blues in the opener of the Pakistan Cup last year. This will be a clash between sides captained by Shadab Khan and Mohammad Rizwan; Saad Nasim and Imran Butt led those two last year. It will attract attention to rival any domestic one-day competition around the world, with as strong a roster as is possible and that is hardly the worst silver lining. And in a tournament where AI's role has been trumpeted so proudly, there will be plenty of time after it ends to determine if its purported long-term benefits were artificial, and if it was really all that intelligent.