LAHORE, Oct 21: Former Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) marketing director Zahid Bashir has appealed to the patron president Pervaiz Musharraf to investigate into the financial irregularities being allegedly committed by the board’s current officials.

Addressing a press conference on Friday, Zahid claimed that the PCB marketing department went out of their way by signing ‘Bundled’ commercial rights for Future Tours Programme series at home with a foreign firm.

The PCB sold out five home series under the ‘Bundled’ agreement which includes India, Zimbabwe, West Indies, South Africa and Australia to be held from Jan, 2006 to Feb 2008 for Rs.488,719,800.

“This is the biggest throwaway deal in the history of PCB because such contracts have always been awarded on series-to-series basis,” he asserted.

He urged the president to appoint a commission comprising economists and marketing experts to look into the contracts signed.

Zahid stressed that rights were always sold according to the market demand of a team.

“If Pakistan won the World Cup-2007 the PCB would be in better position to demand more money,” he said.

Australia were number one in the world and their board was dictating terms while selling such rights, he said.

Bashir believed that it was also unethical as the present management of the PCB being an ad hoc one, it had no mandate to sale future rights.

Zahid said that he had been reinstated by the court of law but the PCB was not willing to take him back, only because in his presence they could not sell rights so cheaply.

He said that PCB was of the view that his (Zahid) appointment was not made through a transparent process.

“What kind of transparency the board is exercising when two of the staff members it has appointed are relatives to a top PCB official,” he alleged.