KARACHI: While Pakistan Cricket Board’s (PCB) Women’s Wing Chairperson Shireen Javed has taken off to India to fulfil yet another personal commitment after her recent sojourn in the USA, Women’s Wing Manager Ayesha Ashhar remains clueless about the details of the forthcoming domestic tournaments mentioned by the chairperson over two weeks back.

Mrs Javed, in an interview with Dawn on Sept 26, had mentioned holding a series of domestic tournaments for junior and senior girls before Oct 20 when the women’s cricket team leaves for an invitational tour of China where they’ll be playing a few festival matches as arranged by PCB Director General Javed Miandad, who also happens to be cricket ambassador to China.

Speaking to Dawn on Monday, Ayesha Ashhar said that the tournaments will happen whenever Mrs Javed had said they would. When informed that they should already have begun by now as the chairperson had said they would take place before the team left for China, she said: ‘Well, I don’t know much about these things. You should ask Mrs Javed when she returns from India. But I think the inter-district junior tournament may start in a week’s time.’

The former national hockey player, brought in to handle the affairs of women’s cricket in Pakistan, added: ‘As for the team’s visit to China, it is only a club team with five or six national players from Karachi included in the side, who will be accompanied by Sagheer Abbas.’

When asked for her reaction about the Pakistan Women’s Cricket Control Association (PWCCA) lawyer Barrister Zafarullah Khan’s claim that the PCB Women’s Wing had been established unlawfully four years ago and they were on the verge of proving this point in the court of law, Ayesha said: ‘Really? Sorry, I don’t know anything about that but Mrs Javed would be in a better position to give you her reaction regarding the matter.’

When asked who was in charge of the wing in her absence, Ayesha said that she as its manager was in fact in charge but she wasn’t really aware of all the facts. ‘If there are news items appearing in the papers about it, they haven’t really crossed my eye,’ she said apologetically. ‘Please ask all these things, including details of the domestic tournaments, from Mrs Javed when she returns. I, too, will be more abreast about the latest happenings when she comes back from India on Tuesday night, most probably,’ she concluded.