LAHORE, Feb 8: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has instructed the Pakistan team management to take necessary steps to avoid any further controversies after an interview from ace off-spinner Saeed Ajmal to BBC on Monday sparked a row over his bowling action. Talking to Dawn, PCB chairman Zaka Ashraf said the Board had reviewed the entire situation and instructed the team management in the UAE to fully assist the players whenever they give any statement or interview to the press. “In future, a key official of the team management will also sit with the players during any interview session,” he said.

Saeed, the man of the series in the recent 3-0 whitewash of England, told BBC in an interview on Monday that the ICC had allowed him 23.5 degrees to compensate for an accident in which he injured his arm. The ICC, however, was quick to reject the suggestion and said no exception was being made for the off-spinner.

Meanwhile, to a question about the late inclusion of all-rounder Shoaib Malik in the one-day squad against England, the chairman said it was done on the demand of captain Misbah-ul-Haq.

Zaka said that the captain might have been more comfortable with Malik otherwise the PCB was keen to give exposure to a young, upcoming player and that’s why Hammad Azam was named in the squad. “However, we accepted Misbah’s suggestion with the hope that Malik will strengthen the team to earn more victories for Pakistan in the one-day series,” he said.

There are conflicting-reports over Malik’s late inclusion in the team. According to one report, it is learnt the selection committee had included Malik in the original squad but the PCB bigwigs later axed his name. Another version is that the selectors, ignoring the advice from Misbah to include Malik, had dropped the all-rounder from the squad.

Zaka, who also met the patron-in-chief PCB, President Asif Ali Zardari in Islamabad on Wednesday said during the meeting the patron had instructed to ensure maximum exposure to the youngsters and promotion of cricket at the grassroots level.

He said the patron was also glad with the performance of the national team against England and expressed the sentiments that the show against England had also made the Pakistani nation quite happy.

To a question, the PCB chairman said the topic of introducing the democratic set-up in the PCB — for which the ICC has given a deadline to all the member countries for adopting it till June 2013 — never came up in the discussion.

At present, only Bangladesh and Pakistan are to implement the democratic system in their respective cricket boards, as third country Sri Lanka had changed its set-up according to the ICC instructions. The rest of the member countries are already following the democratic set up.

Meanwhile, Zaka said the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) had not yet conveyed a final date to the PCB for sending its security team to Pakistan this month. The tour of Bangladesh team to Pakistan, tentatively scheduled for April, depends mainly on the visit of the security team.

“At first, the BCB was pondering over a date in the second week of February for the security team’s visit, but now it has been deferred till the last week of the current month,” Zaka said.