June 13, 2002	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 1, 1423

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KARACHI, June 12: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) will have a new director as early as next month when Brig Munawwar Rana joins a sister organization of army to begin a post-retirement career.

Munawwar will be joining Islamabad-based National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) on a three-year contract when he retires in August after a distinguished career. He is being released from the PCB on the request of NRB chairman Lt Gen (retd) Tanveer Naqvi.

Munawwar, who took over from Yawar Saeed in November 2000, is tipped to be replaced by Chistie Mujahid.

Chistie, 58, who did his Masters in Law from Cambridge University in 1966-67, was offered the job by chairman of the PCB Lt Gen Tauqir Zia during a tournament in the desert city of Sharjah earlier this year.

Although no job related official discussions have taken place lately, they are likely to be completed by the end of this month which will pave the way for Mujahid to take up his assignment from around mid-July.

Munawwar returned from tours to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait on Wednesday. He was, however, not available for comments.

Munawwar will be leaving for London by June 20 to attend the annual International Cricket Council (ICC) meeting starting at Lord’s from June 24. The meeting concludes June 30 with the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) meeting.

With Munawwar certain to quit and Mujahid as the favourite to replace him, there is a school of thought in the PCB to send Mujahid alongwith the outgoing PCB officials to the ICC meetings.

Munawwar was wanted by NBR in March and the PCB had also agreed to release him. But when the change was communicated to the ICC, the top officials of the mother body requested Lt Gen Tauqir during a meeting in Johannesburg to delay the change until the Lord’s meeting.

The ICC argued that it had been communicating with Munawwar for quite sometime and a change in March would disrupt the proposals and plans on which it was working alongwith the Pakistani official.

Efforts were made to contact the PCB chairman. But he was not available for comments.