October 10, 2006	Tuesday	Ramazan 16, 1427

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LAHORE, Oct 9: The outgoing Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman, Shaharyar M. Khan, has claimed that the major achievement of his three-year tenure was bringing about stability in the team.

“We made a number of mistakes but I believe we have some achievements, too, and among that bringing stability in the team is my main success and I am proud of it,” Shaharyar said while speaking at a Iftar-cum-dinner hosted in his honour by his successor Dr Nasim Ashraf on Monday.

Shaharyar, who tendered his resignation on Friday, following the crisis in the team, said the team lacked unity when he was appointed manager of the World Cup 2003 squad, but now the situation was not like that.

“I believe a team can maintain winning streak only with team spirit and stars can bring wins only one or two times,” he said.

“That was the result of the stability, we won three series in a row, and our winning graph remained 95 per cent. For it, the more important factor was that our team did not give up the chase till last ball and ultimately won many matches,” he said.

Shaharyar said he also made a plan for smooth change of captaincy when Inzamam was retired and for that purpose had picked Younis as deputy of Inzamam.

He advised the new chairman to give more focus on the grassroots level.

“We have worked on grassroots level, introducing school championship and women championship and there is a need to keep continuity in that direction,” he said.

He said Dr Nasim was the best man to continue those projects, because he as member of the ad hoc committee was very well informed about the positive points of those projects.

Shaharyar said Dr Nasim helped him a lot in making different policies and his cricket knowledge was praiseworthy.

Dr Nasim hailed the performance of Shaharyar and said he always maintained integrity of the board and established good relations with other cricket boards and that helped to keep PCB prestige so high in the international cricket circles.