PSL: 5 controversies in the history of the tournament

Since its inception in 2016, the popularity of the Pakistan Super League (PSL), hosted by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has grown leaps and bounds. The tournament has emerged as the second-best franchise cricket league across the globe after the Indian Premier League (IPL).

However, since 2016, PSL has been plagued with many controversies which had resulted in the T20 extravaganza being the focal point of discussion in the cricket fraternity for all the wrong reasons. From the spot-fixing racket in 2017 to the 2021 edition of the league getting postponed, PSL has made headlines time and again.

In this article, let’s flip the pages and take a look at the 5 worst controversies to hit the PSL:

1. PSL spot-fixing scandal (2017)

The second edition of the T20 Championship saw several notable cricketers getting framed in an ugly spot-fixing scandal. In early 2017, the anti-corruption unit of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) in association with the International Cricket Council (ICC) carried out an investigation that resulted in the authorities leveling charges against six cricketers namely Sharjeel Khan, Khalid Latif, Nasir Jamshed, Mohammad Irfan, Shahzaib Hasan, and Mohammad Nawaz.

It was learned that Sharjeel charged a whopping 2 million Pakistani rupees for playing two dot balls in one of the PSL matches while Latif tried to convince other team players to participate in the fixing. For their deeds, Sharjeel and Latif had to face a ban for five years from all formats of the game.

Another accused player like Mohammad Irfan was subjected to a one-year ban from the sport for not reporting about getting approached for spot-fixing. Nasir Jamshed received the harshest punishment as he was handed a 10-year ban along with getting sentenced to 17-month jail.