LAHORE: Former members of the Board of Governors (BoG) of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) have urged the newly-elected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to immediately restore the previous constitution of the PCB and restore departmental, regional, district and club cricket.
The reservations were pointed out by BoG member Nauman Butt, who had to leave his post during the tenure of previous PCB chairman Ehsan Mani. Nauman had been against PCB’s move to dissolve the departmental cricket system and introduce a regional system during a meeting of the BoG in Quetta.
A joint-press statement by Nauman alongside other former BoG members Suleman Talpur and Shakil Sheikh, and former Bahawalpur Cricket Association president Tariq Sarwar, stated that the last three years were the darkest period in Pakistan’s cricketing history as the PCB acted on former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s desire to abolish the departmental system.
Noting that it had led to several cricketers losing their jobs, they said that it was imperative that Shehbaz — as the patron-in-chief of the PCB — takes immediate steps to put Pakistan’s domestic cricket structure back on track as the entire system had been running on ad-hoc basis since the implementation of the new PCB constitution in August 2019.
Regional cricket was the brainchild of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan who believed that it will bring in more competitiveness, garner the interest of the fans, and will provide Pakistan with much more polished players.
While the idea did prove to be fruitful in a number of ways, former and current players complained as they suffered financial stress due to the closure of the departmental teams.
