October 10, 2008	Friday	Shawwal 10, 1429

LAHORE, Oct 9: Ijaz Butt, the newly appointed chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), taking action on a media report, has decided to probe into how the Canada-bound Pakistan squad, picked by the national selection committee, was tampered with.

Ijaz told Dawn that he had noticed former chief selector Salahuddin Ahmed protesting that his committee had chosen off-spinner Saeed Ajmal for the Oct 10-13 quadrangular Twenty20 tournament in Toronto, Canada, but when the PCB announced the team for the said event, Shoaib Khan of Quetta region was included, replacing Saeed.

According to the chairman, the PCB had written a letter to the Federal Sports Ministry, which reportedly had to give final approval to the 15-member squad, asking whether the ministry or any PCB official meddled in the team selection.

Ijaz took charge as the PCB chief on Wednesday while the team had already been announced on Tuesday. As the Sports Minister Najamuddin Khan had taken the charge as PCB’s acting chairman, till the chairman’s appointment, in place of Dr Nasim Ashraf, it was decided that the federal minister would give his final approval to the squad.

“We will wait for the reply from the Sports Ministry and if anybody within the board made the change [in the squad picked by the selectors] strict action will be taken as it is unfair for any person to make changes in the team,” he asserted.

Moreover, it is learnt that the chairman has also taken notice of violation of the media policy for the Canada tour. According to the media policy, only one journalist from news agencies could go on a tour. However, the Media Director PCB Mansoor Suhail, who is also in Canada with the national team, has sent 14 reporters for a low-profile tournament in Toronto and among them five belong to different news agencies.

Secondly, the sports policy also says that one journalist could go on a tour once in a year, but a good number of them are on their second one in one year.

Sources said the chairman wondered as to what importance the four-day Canada tournament carries where Pakistan will be competing against average teams like Canada and Zimbabwe along with just one strong opponent in Sri Lanka.