LAHORE: Two former Pakistan cricket captains Inzamam ul Haq, Muhammad Yousuf and two former Test cricketers Saqlain Mushtaq and Saeed Anwar welcomed the decision of the apex court for appointing new Chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board from the regional cricket bodies to stream line the affairs of cricket right from basics to top level.
They said “There is dire need to appoint a good cricket administrative from the regional cricket bodies and a right candidate can be picked from them to address the problems our cricket is facing at many levels”.
They said the detailed judgment of the Islamabad High Court is in right direction that the new Chairman PCB be appointed from regional bodies and have a good cricket back ground being a former first class or Test cricketer.
They were of the view that regional cricket bodies are the nucleus of the cricket and there are good administrators who are serving the regional cricket bodies since long and the most suitable among them is the former President, Lahore City Cricket Association, Khawaja Nadeem Ahmed who has vast experience of cricket handling.
“He is attached with the game for nearly three decades and he has good leadership qualities besides being a former first class cricketer and under his dynamic leadership LCCA has gained the status of a role model body”, they added.
They said the experiment to appoint non-cricketers as the head of the PCB has brought adverse impact on the overall cricket of Pakistan and urged the government to take this aspect into consideration before appointing the new chairman.
The group of former test cricketers said Kh Nadeem brings in necessary experience of good governance of cricket besides being a private entrepreneur and during his association with the LCCA trend setting efforts were made to revive cricket in Lahore which remained in doldrums for the last twenty three years. “New bench marks have been set as far as development of cricket is concerned in Lahore at grassroots level and measures were taken to revamp cricket on modern lines with professionalism”, they added.
They said the biggest issue which Pakistan cricket was facing, was the resumption of international cricket in the country, besides revamping domestic cricket structure.
“At this stage when foreign teams are not visiting Pakistan owing to security concerns, we can concentrate on overhauling our domestic cricket structure by making it more competitive which will help new talent to polish its skills and to become quality cricketers in near future” they added.
“To execute all these measures we need a good administrative running the affairs of the PCB and it is the only way to bring improvement in our overall cricket”,they said.
