Former officials’ group discusses course of action against PCB policies

KARACHI: A meeting of Pakistan domestic cricket old guards and representatives of defunct associations was held in Lahore on Tuesday during which three seasoned organisers joined the group that is opposing the policies of the current management of PCB.

Informed sources said that former PCB Governing Board member Chaudhary Anwer, former joint secretary of LCCA Khwaja Nadeem, and former Test Umpire Mian Muhammad Aslam have joined the group.

The group was formed last year by Malik Zulfiqar, a former president of Sialkot-Gujranwala region.

During the meeting, Malik Zulfiqar said that if all things related to the grassroots level cricket were to be decided by PCB itself, what role there was for the interim committees. He termed the committees “dummies” and said they were instituted because the PCB did not want the old guards to work.

Mian Aslam said that the PCB high officials were reversing their own decisions related to the grassroots level, “but a lot of damage has been done” during the last three years.

He said that not a single local tournament had been organised in Punjab.

An official of a defunct regional association said that time has come to remove those who have destroyed Pakistan’s cricket.

He said that grassroots cricket cannot be organised by those who “make policies in cool rooms of PCB.

“Only those people know the ground realities who spent their lives in cricket grounds and produced star players,” he said.

The participants of the meeting welcomed the new members and said it had been proven that their stance against the policies of PCB was right.

They said that the election process of associations was being delayed because a couple of high officials in the PCB did not want the old guards of the game in associations.

The participants included Ahmed Nawaz Khan, Tariq Fareed, Amanullah Bhatti, Ghulam Mustafa, and Malik Faisal Khursheed.