June 28, 2008	Saturday	Jamadi-us-Sani 23, 1429

Addressing a crowded press conference here on Friday, Majid said: “Financinal irregularities are on in the PCB and public accounts committee should intervene to bring the real picture before the nation.”

Majid, flanked by former Test cricketer Mohammad Ilyas and ex-PCB secretary Waqar Ahmed, also welcomed the decision of the federal government of laying income tax on the PCB in the fiscal budget.

Majid, who had also acted as PCB chief executive in late 1990s, said he was not opposed to the president of Pakistan being the patron of the board but recent decisions were harming the game in the country. “It has been a practice for decades, but sorry to say the people hired in the recent years is just to oblige friends which resulted in ruining of the game,” he said.

“When I was the chief executive the board was running with just 17 staff members and yet we were among the top two cricketing nations in the world,” he said. “But after that the PCB posts were awarded to ‘friends’ which resulted in debacles at the 2003 and 2007 World Cups and the ICC Champions Trophy in 2006. We could not qualify for even the second round despite the fact that the board has been run with 703 staff members today.”

“In fact, the non-technocrat PCB officials always bowed to senior players in the team just to please them but, ironically, the team has gone down due to non-existiance of discipline,” Majid remarked. “I would like to ask Dr Nasim Ashraf to resign as the PCB chairman after the Lahore High Court decision to restore Salim Altaf on his post,” said Majid.

Criticising the current selectors, Majid said it had distributed a good number of green caps during the home series against Zimbabwe but none of the younger cricketers were given a long run. “Where are players like Khurram Manzoor, Khalid Latif, Rizwan Ahmed, Abdul Rauf, Kamran Hussain, Samiullah Khan,” he asked.

He lamented that the bad attitude of players such as Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Asif and others were direct result of PCB’s lack of control over things.

“They have been protecting Asif and Shoaib from day one despite their antics. They appointed Shoaib Malik as captain who under ICC rules and regulation could face life ban for admitting in public that he had fixed a Twenty20 match.

“The board did not take any action against Inzamam-ul-Haq, who decided to forfeit the Oval Test after facing ball-tampering allegations. The PCB spent millions in defending the case but Hair is back again.”

Majid said the non-technocrats did not know the importance of the cricketing associations which were the real resource of producing the players.

“The England and Wales Cricket Board are granting one million pounds each to the counties annually to strengthen them to produce good cricketers. But here in Pakistan the non-technocrat PCB officials have centralized all the powers on the pretext that the associations are corrupt which is a funny allegation.”

Majid said he was ready to take charge of the PCB, if offered, and to clean up the mess.