On a hazy Wednesday morning at Lahore’s Jilani Park, the PSL unveiled its trophy for the ninth season. The PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi met each of the six captains as well as the franchise owners. Perhaps there wasn’t a set dress code, but it could perhaps best be described as mysterious-casual: Shan Masood, Babar Azam and Shadab Khan wore their team jerseys; Shaheen Shah Afridi showed up in a Lahore Qalandars hoodie; Mohammad Rizwan was dressed all right, while Sarfaraz Ahmed arguably presented as the sharpest of all, but there was no sign of the Quetta Gladiators logo on him. The Qalandars team owner Sameen Rana, in a tracksuit, seemed to have broken off a morning run to hand over the trophy to Naqvi.

It was far removed from the glitz and glamour of earlier years. The high-water mark for such ostentatious opulence was in 2017, when then-chairman Najam Sethi oversaw a similar event, which was, in truth, a gemstone craftsmanship convention disguised as a cricketing occasion. It included vivid descriptions of the 50,000 double-pointed Swarovski crystals that adorned the “Spirit Trophy”. According to the PCB website, it took “its inspiration from the brilliance of the universe”.

Maybe the most appropriate way to unveil a trophy lies somewhere in the middle of these two, but if 2017 encapsulates the heady optimism Pakistan felt about the PSL at the time, 2024 reveals the eventual direction of travel. The PSL’s early seasons managed to bottle the hope and excitement a newer, fresher audience felt about Pakistani cricket. The biggest names in T20 cricket, from Chris Gayle, Andre Russell and Kevin Pietersen to Brendon McCullum, Sunil Narine and AB de Villiers, regularly featured. Every year, the tournament took another significant step towards helping end Pakistan’s long drought of hosting cricket in the country, with the atmosphere the 2017 final in Lahore generated among the most electric in recent memory.

As the BBL lost some of its sheen in those years, the PSL unofficially began to brand itself as the second-biggest T20 league behind the IPL. And on a number of metrics, it was hard to argue. As the league returned to Pakistan in its totality, it regularly packed out stadia, particularly for evening games. Team loyalties and fan engagement was organically passionate in a way few leagues could rival. The frequent dominance of ball over bat – from 2016 to 2019, no league had fewer runs per match – meant it provided a product that was different to the run fests such leagues often throw up.

A cursory glance at the overseas participants this year, however, offers a sobering reminder that progress is not always linear, and the PSL’s growth cannot be taken for granted.

The platinum overseas category picks this year were Jordan Cox, Daniel Sams, Kieron Pollard (well out of his prime), Rassie van der Dussen, David Willey, Noor Ahmad and Sherfane Rutherford. Noor has already withdrawn from the tournament, and the absentee list that balloons daily, with Rashid Khan, Reece Topley, Lungi Ngidi, Jamie Overton and Tim Seifert all unavailable, while van der Dussen and Tabraiz Shamsi are among those partially present. It is not exactly a list brimming with the sort of quality you’d expect at the second-biggest cricket league.

The dysfunction at the board level has not helped. Since the start of 2021, there have been three PSL seasons and five PCB chairmen. There was an ill-fated dalliance with the Pakistan Junior League and the PCB flirted with the idea of a women’s league without ever seriously drawing up plans for it, eventually throwing together three women’s exhibition matches and then scrapping it altogether.

But several factors outside the PCB’s control also make this a particularly precarious moment for the PSL. The general elections held on February 8 in a bitter political atmosphere captivated the attention of most Pakistanis, as well as the media platforms which would normally have pivoted fully from politics to cricket by now. The PSL has, by contrast, slipped under the radar with almost negligible mainstream media coverage as the fallout from the elections continues with no discernible end in sight.

However, the PSL has greater problems than unfortunate timing. When the league was inaugurated in 2016, the February-March window the tournament has normally occupied was wide open in a calendar that was still relatively uncluttered. Players could use the event as a tune-up ahead of the IPL in April, while those not part of the IPL could push their cases for the T20 Blast and the CPL further down the line. Hosting the tournament in the UAE allowed the PCB to soft-launch the concept with those who would inevitably take coaxing to come to Pakistan, and when the switch was eventually made, the reception was (James Faulkner notwithstanding) universally positive.

But the recent emergence of two leagues, the SA20 and the ILT20, has pushed the PSL into something of a corner. The owners of those teams range from IPL owners to Adani and Glazer, with the PSL’s financial abilities paling in comparison. It has resulted in the late winter window becoming among the busiest of the year, hemming the PSL into an ever-tighter sliver of the calendar from mid-February to mid-March.

This has deprived the tournament of the flexibility it was able to deploy as recently as 2022, when it began in late January to accommodate a home series against Australia. This year, the PCB had originally designated the PSL’s window to begin on February 8, but with the ILT20 running till February 17, sought to minimise a clash by announcing that as its starting date.

This forced the tournament to run until March 18, well into the month of Ramzan, when religious rituals prohibiting food and drink from sunrise to sunset make it a less desirable window for players and match-going fans alike. The month is determined by the lunar calendar and starts about 11 days earlier each year, which means for at least the next half decade it clashes directly with part or all of the PSL’s current slot. Initially, the PCB had assumed moving the tournament into January was the obvious solution, but the current scenario suggests a three-way tie with those two leagues looms large.

Scheduling inconveniences aside, the advent of those leagues means players have much greater choice in where they wish to ply their trade during this time. The SA20 and the ILT20’s highest salary bands are significantly higher than the PSL’s and both South Africa and the UAE remain more attractive destinations than Pakistan. Despite improvements in Pakistan’s safety concerns, player movements still require security to pull out all the stops, and a relatively less permissive social culture makes it difficult for Pakistan to compete with those two countries on non-cricketing factors too. For the best players, the PSL becomes an easier league to skip if they have an SA20 or ILT20 contract before it, and/or an IPL deal to follow.

Simply put, the PSL has gone from being the second-biggest T20 league in the world to the third-biggest in February in the span of 14 months.

The consequence of the IPL immediately following the tournament is that players are likelier to err on the side of caution when it comes to making themselves available for the PSL. Topley was pulled out of the tournament by his board because of a slight niggle sustained in the SA20, with the player eager to play in the IPL and the board keen to ensure he remains fit for the T20 World Cup that follows. Rashid decided to skip the PSL as he nurses a back injury with a view to ensure he can play the IPL.

If the PCB saw these problems coming, there isn’t yet a sign of how they planned to deal with them. Naqvi, in fairness, is barely a week into his job, though it’s worth remembering that he also currently holds the position of caretaker chief minister of the Punjab province, a side gig that puts him in charge of governing 120 million people.

The financial realities are hard enough to contend with for a cricket board that is willing and able to confront them, and the PCB has of late shown no signs that it is serious on either front. The PSL appears to have drifted into turbulence without a captain at the helm, and as the high winds buffet it from either side, all it can do for now is ride out the waves.

And suddenly, the PSL captains’ sartorial choices don’t seem like much of a problem after all.