ISLAMABAD - Islamabad Region president Shakil Shaikh once again didn’t bother to take stakeholders into confidence and announced the NBP-ICA One-Day Cricket Tournament 2017 from November 20.
It was witnessed on numerous occasions that Shakil Shaikh never bothered to invite clubs captains to witness draws and check the entire process. What is the reason to keep the things so secret? It is quite obvious that he doesn’t want to let the entire process free and transparent and wants to provide favours to blue-eyed ones.
When this scribe contacted Islamabad Cricket Association (ICA) president Nasir Iqbal, who is also serving as manager with Islamabad team in National T20 at Pindi Stadium to know why stakeholders and even Islamabad tournament committee chairman Syed Abrar Ali Rizvi was consulted before announcing the schedule, Nasir said: “The members were present including secretary Shabbir Ahmed, as Shakil Shaikh and I were busy in Rawalpindi and Lahore respectively.”
He claimed that no injustice is being done to any team, but he failed to justify how draws were made. The question arises here that why the captains were not invited and why was the tournament organising committee chairman Abrar Rizvi not informed about it?
The sources have confirmed to this scribe that Islamabad Region elections are scheduled this month and the PCB has made it mandatory to conduct at least two tournaments annually. The announcement of the tournament in haste is to fulfill that legal formality. It is high time when the PCB chairman Najam Sethi must check sorry state of affairs of Islamabad and Rawalpindi Regions and provide justice to long-suffering players and genuine organisers.
