Mr. Sheharyar Khan’ statement of on the first day of his taking over, as chairman PCB that Misbahul Haq will be retained as captain, till the world cup and Mr. Subhan was the man in the PCB, removed any semblance of doubts that the PCB will be controlled remotely by Mr. Najam Sethi, and that Mr. Sheharyar Khan will be blindly continuing his policies, even at the peril of Pakistan cricket. The shocking manner in which our cricket team surrendered in Test and ODI series, during its recently Sri Lanka tour is just the tip of the iceberg as even more pathetic was the inertia of the top management of the PCB, which deliberately failed to perform an accountability act, vis-a-vis the responsible persons of the tour management committee. All types of coaches, who took the tour as a joy ride or a paid holiday, and the players who failed despite having been on a very long training camp preparing for the Sri Lanka’s tour, during the last few months, were not held accountable.
The board also typically looked the other way, when the time came to fix the responsibility on the person (s) liable for not taking pre-emptive measures, to save Saeed Ajmal from the ban imposed by the ICC. This is all the more a serious matter, because many commentators and experts had forewarned several months ago that this situation was written on the wall. Why can’t the most seasoned living diplomat in the country understand the simple fact that the existence of the PCB, is due to the world class players like Younis Khan and not the vice versa? It seems that everybody in the country except the chairman PCB, knows the fact that a vested group in the PCB is playing dirty politics, which has ruined the game, spirit and morale of our players to the extent that since the PCB was taken over by Mr. Najam Sethi, our team miserably lost the champions trophy by going down to the last position among all the participants, lost a Test and an ODI against Zimbabwe, then lost two tournaments (T20 World Cup and the Asia Cup) which were played in Dhaka few months back, and finally capitulated and the Sri Lankan team in both the Test matches and also lost the ODI series, 2-1.
SYED NAYYAR UDDIN AHMAD,
Lahore, September 27.