Pakistan prime minister dissolves PCB

 

The Prime Minister of Pakistan and new Patron of the PCB, Nawaz Sharif, has dissolved the governing board of the PCB, and formed a five-member interim management committee (IMC) to run cricket in the country. The PCB's acting chairman Najam Sethi‚ former chairman Shahryar Khan, former players Zaheer Abbas and Haroon Rasheed, former team manager Naved Cheema were appointed to the committee.

The IMC was directed by Sharif to elect one of its members as chairman, and the committee unanimously chose Sethi, who has been acting as caretaker chairman since July and will represent Pakistan at the ICC board meeting on October 18 and 19 in London.

"The Patron of PCB, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, has been pleased to direct the following: 1. Paragraph Section 41 of PCB Constitution has been amended and under the said paragraphs the board has been superseded," the PCB said in a release. "An Interim Management Committee (IMC) has been constituted to ensure that PCB remains enabled to continue to perform day-to-day domestic and international functions for the promotion of the game and in line with the directions of the court."

The dissolution was the outcome of an issue that began with the Islamabad High Court's judgement on a constitutional writ petition challenging the election of the previous PCB chairman, Zaka Ashraf, who was then suspended and replaced temporarily by Sethi for a 90-day term. Sethi, a senior journalist and former caretaker chief minister of Punjab, also ran into trouble with the courts, with another judgement severely curtailing his powers. The court had set a deadline of October 18 for the PCB to hold fresh elections for chairman but the PCB wasn't able to comply.

The reason best known to ESPNcricinfo for the noncompliance was an incomplete electoral college of many regional associations in Punjab - the largest province in the country - and the refusal of the Election Commission of Pakistan to hold the elections. The PCB had written three letters to the Election Commission in compliance with the court order but it learned the commission can not carry out the election of an autonomous body. The PCB has appealed against the judgement of the Islamabad court but the appeal has been pending since July 25.