LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Board of Governors in its meeting scheduled for Friday may approve a recommendation to be forwarded by its executive committee, for expanding the BoG strength by including more regions and departments.

It is most likely that the executive committee headed by Najam Sethi — at the BoG meeting — will recommend including at least one region and one department on the BoG to increase its strength to 11.

However, there may be a debate to include more regions on the BoG and also to give both major regions of the country — namely Karachi and Lahore — a permanent seat on the BoG.

Currently, only three regions (Islamabad, Peshawar, Karachi) and four departments (SNGPL UBL, NBP and Wapda) are members of the BoGs, besides two representatives recommended by PCB patron, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, namely Shaharyar M. Khan and Sethi.

Originally, four regions along with the four departments represented at the BoG were those which had topped in the last domestic season. Rawalpindi were the fourth regional team but they were not allowed to sit in the meeting because an ad-hoc body is running the show there.

The PCB is not ready to hold elections in the Rawalpindi region as they probably fear a possible defeat for its favourite group. Lahore is likely to be recommended as the next region to sit on the BoGs while the department — fifth in the last domestic season — may be selected to come as the fifth member.

Dawn also learnt that the executive committee may also recommend reducing the tenure of each BoG member to two years instead of three. Ironically, in the new PCB constitution the tenure of BoG members for regions and departments was three years on the basis of their one-year performance in 2013-14 domestic season.

But as 2014-15 season is about to complete, obviously, there may be a change in the standing of these regions and departments. And so, it would be better to reduce the tenure of the region to one year if the performance in domestic cricket is the criteria. Otherwise, on rotation basis, every region and department should remain on the BoG for two years.

The other points on the agenda for Friday meeting are Shaharyar’s report on different game-related developments, approval of audited accounts 2012-13 and update on media rights, which now will be sold out for five years period instead of eight.

Meanwhile, the performance given by Pakistan in the recent Test outings against Australia and New Zealand has handed new hope to the PCB for a better package of five-year media rights deal.

On the back of an impressive 2-0 series sweep against Michael Clarke’s Australia, prior to the ongoing New Zealand Test series, Pakistan galloped to third in the ICC team rankings behind leaders South Africa and second-placed Australia.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2014