LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has restructured the President’s Trophy Grade-II by splitting it into Gold and Silver tiers for the first time.
The Gold tier, featuring 14 teams drawn from the top-ranked sides of last season, will begin on May 12 across venues in Abbottabad, Haripur, Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The Silver tier, comprising 10 teams, is scheduled to start on May 18. The top two sides from Silver will earn promotion to Gold, while the winner and runner-up of Gold will move up to the first-class President’s Trophy Grade-I and the List-A President’s Cup.
Gold is organised into two pools of seven teams each, with every side playing six non-first-class three-day matches in a single-league round-robin stage from 12 May to 11 June. The top two teams from each pool will progress to semi-finals (14–16 June), and the final is set for 18–21 June.
Pool A includes Eshaal Associates, JDW Sugar Mills, MIT Solutions, PHA Rawalpindi, Railways, Ahmed Glass and Kingsmen Academy; Pool B features Higher Education Commission (HEC), Kingsmen, Wing 999 Sports, Ghani Institute, Sardar Group, Port Qasim and Vital Tea.
Matches will be staged at a mix of regional grounds: Pool A fixtures are scheduled at Railway Cricket Stadium (Haripur), Abbottabad Cricket Stadium and the National Cricket Ground in Islamabad, while Pool B matches will take place at the Diamond Cricket Ground (Islamabad), Shoaib Akhtar Cricket Stadium (Rawalpindi) and Marghzar Cricket Ground (Islamabad).
