Uncertainty Looms Over Quaid-e-Azam 2024-25 Schedule as October 19 Approaches

The start date for the 2024-25 season of the Quaid-e-Azam (QeA) Trophy remains uncertain, despite Pakistan's busy international Test season already underway. The PCB had tentatively scheduled the premier first-class tournament to begin on October 20, but as that date approaches, there is still no clear confirmation on when the tournament will kick off.

While the dates for all domestic competitions announced by the PCB in August were tentative and subject to change, a PCB official told ESPNcricinfo as recently as last month that the QeA was set to keep to its October 20 plan. ESPNcricinfo understands that no one, even those in charge of domestic affairs at the PCB, knows when the tournament schedule will eventually be announced.

ESPNcricinfo has learned that the tournament is waiting to be greenlit by PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi.

The PCB declined to comment on what holds the approval back at this stage, though budgetary approval operationally comes from the chairman, and is understood to be one of the factors in the delay. Even so, the lack of information about the QeA is in stark contrast to the fanfare with which the Champions One-Day Cup, which was held in September, was marked by the board.

The decision to host that one-day tournament in September, in Pakistan's only meaningfully free window until May, was significant because it meant players wouldn't be able to get domestic red-ball cricket under their belts ahead of England's ongoing three-Test tour in October. Members of the national Test set-up were understood to have privately expressed frustration with the situation, though there was an acceptance that the schedule was out of their control.

The QeA has never quite managed to keep to a schedule or format, but no information about its start this late into a season is unprecedented of late. In each but two of the last 15 years has the tournament started later than October 26, with the schedule usually out well before October. Each of the last two seasons saw it begin in September; the tournament last year began on September 10, and was wrapped up by October 26.

The situation is even more jarring in a season where Pakistan are scheduled to play more Test matches than any other this century. They are already more than halfway into the seven home Test matches they play between August 2024 and January 2025, with two Test matches in South Africa at the turn of the year.