April 05, 2007	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 16, 1428

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KARACHI, April 4: Just four days after Dr Nasim Ashraf, the Pakistan Cricket Board chairman, suspended central contracts of all national players following the World Cup debacle, some of the stars have been offered preferential treatment.

Wicket-keeper Kamran Akmal, opening batsmen Imran Nazir and Mohammad Hafeez and pace bowler Rao Iftikhar – all members of the Pakistan World Cup squad – are representing Punjab in the ongoing Pentangular Cup cricket tournament in the city and have been provided five-star accommodation at PCB’s expense.

Salman Butt, the left-handed Test opener who was unceremoniously shown the door after the acrimonious tour of England last year, has also taken advantage of the generous offer.

But while fast bowler Mohammad Sami, who will play for Sindh from next round onwards, turned down the invitation simply because he lives in Karachi, there are other cricketers such as Naved Latif, Mohammad Khalil and Kashif Raza who have represented Pakistan either in Tests or One-day Internationals, but not been provided five-star accommodation. They have put up at a two-star hotel in Saddar Town along with other members of the Punjab squad.

Interestingly, some other Punjab-based Pakistan players like Imran Farhat, Taufiq Umar and Abdur Rehman are staying at a lower category hotel since they are turning out for their employers, Habib Bank, in the tournament.

The reason behind sudden termination of the lucrative central contracts, as the PCB chief himself claimed during a press conference, was that the board wanted to introduce a performance-based contracts in order to make the players ‘more’ accountable to their employers, that is the PCB.

However, one can’t understand the logic behind offering national players first-class boarding and lodging keeping in mind the inquest into Pakistan’s sorrowful showing at the World Cup only began from Wednesday.

If the PCB wanted to be generous to the so-called underperforming national heroes, it could have lodged the outstation players at its Regional Cricket Academy’s hostel in the vicinity of the National Stadium. The facilities here are second to none.

Several times in the past, members of the Pakistan ‘A’, Under-19, women teams as well as a couple of visiting teams were provided boarding and lodging facilities at the RCA.