15 January 2005	Saturday	04 Zilhaj 1425

LAHORE, Jan 14: Former Test captain Majid Khan has attributed decline in Pakistan cricket to "unprofessional" running of the PCB during the last five years.

Majid was speaking as a guest in the concluding session of the Senate Standing Committee on Sports (SSCS) on Friday.

Majid said first the system of selecting Pakistan team was wrong. "Our selectors should be paid and they should be full time workers who have enough time to go to the grounds and watch matches. Going through players' performance reports or testing them in training camps is not enough," he opined.

Majid said that the national selection committee should pick the final eleven and the captain should have the ability to use them properly while the coach should be confined to preparing the strategy of the matches.

"Unfortunately, in Pakistan the selectors are picking 15 or 16 players while captain and coach select the final line-up and in case of defeat, neither the selection committee nor the management accepts the responsibility," he said.

He said that during last four years the selectors had ruined the career of a lot of cricketers by picking and dropping them quickly. "A selector should have the sense that the player he is picking has the talent of playing cricket for years but it has not been happening," he said.

The PCB, he said, had unfairly changed the 40 years old domestic structure replacing the divisions with regions. "What was the need to change a system which had produced cricketers like Zaheer Abbas, Asif Iqbal, Mushtaq Mohammad, Sadiq Mohammad, Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram, me and many others."

He said that Pakistan neighbouring country India had the same system they had adopted 70 years before while Australia was following a 125-year old pattern. He said that PCB also grabbed the powers of the associations and selecting the teams of the regions, appointing their managers and coaches.

"By doing so it had ruined the management at local level which had always been assisting the board," he said. "I believe, associations are the PCB and the PCB is the association," he asserted.

He pointed out the PCB was going to hold school and club cricket but where were the grounds. He said that coaching was a specialized field and a Test cricketer could not rectify the faults of players.