PCB forms committees with seven GB members

LAHORE: All the seven available members of Pakistan Cricket Board’s (PCB) depleted Governing Board (GB) have been included in the various PCB committees as they barely managed to form six of them.

As two available members Wazir Ali Khoja and Javed Miandad had already refused to work in any of the committees due to their own reasons, the PCB could hardly complete the formation of the six committees, and doing so it seems to have cared little about the faculty of the members.

Wazir Ali Khoja has been recommended as chairman of the finance committee, and as a member in some other committees, too, but there are reports about his not being too happy with the attitude of PCB Chairman Ijaz Butt, which has prompted to leave all the posts while preferring to only have a seat in the GB. Similarly, Miandad is also not happy with the PCB chairman over different issues, which is why both gentlemen did not attend the GB meeting held in Lahore on Wednesday to give a final shape to the committees.

Miandad, a former Test captain, was named as a member in the cricket committee with Intikhab Alam as its head. But Miandad, in a letter to the chairman, refused to work under Intikhab.

Besides the cricket committee, there are the other five committees, too, namely, finance, audit, infrastructure development, and media.

Interestingly, on Wednesday, the PCB chairman had announced that Naveed Akram Cheema will head two committees — finance and media. But on Thursday, the PCB announced that the media committee will be headed by Chaudhary Mohammad Anwar while Naveed will only look after the finance committee. Naveed is the elected member of the GB belonging to a department as he is working in Wapda as member administration. He could have been the best choice to head the Human Resources and Administration committee.

Similarly, sources said due to availability of lesser number of members, the committees were formed just to fill in the blanks as many are not completing the criteria to run the country’s biggest sports organisation.

Sources said that although a few people are highly qualified, many are matriculates or intermediate pass.

Sources further said that it was also decided in the GB meeting on Wednesday that Siraj-ul-Islam Bukhari from the KCCA will also sit as an observer in the meeting. But his name was not mentioned in the official announcement.

Sources further said that having any observer in the GB meeting will also be unconstitutional. In fact, the PCB and its patron, the President of Pakistan have both failed to complete the strength of the GB for the last 20 months, since it is still missing five technocrats due to which the technical committees have non-technocrats in them.

Sources further said that Wednesday’s GB meeting was a flop as four members remained absent and only five out of a total 15 attended it. The two other absentees besides Khoja and Miandad were Naeem Akhtar Gillani and Tariq Baloch. Sources said that the decision of being absent from the meeting could also be an indirect message to the PCB chairman that they are not ready to sit in the GB.