LAHORE, June 13: Players and officials belonging to the clubs affiliated with the Lahore City Cricket Association (LCCA) staged a protest here on Thursday against the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) outside the Gaddafi Stadium, terming their ouster by the PCB scrutiny committee as uncalled for.

Around 700 to 800 players belonging to 41 clubs ousted by the PCB scrutiny committee along with the clubs officials gathered in the afternoon raising slogans against PCB chairman Zaka Ashraf and the PCB scrutiny committee for conducting unfair scrutiny.

Talking to Dawn, former LCCA president Khwaja Nadeem said that 41 clubs had been omitted from the list just because the PCB feared they would vote in favour of him (Khwaja) in the upcoming elections which are due before June 18 as per order of the Lahore High Court.

Khwaja asked the authorities concerned in the PCB to declare null and void the entire process of the scrutiny committee.

He further said that the clubs in question would not file appeals before the PCB election commissioner since it was under the influence of the suspended PCB chief.

Khwaja also welcomed the IHC decision ordering the Inter-provincial Coordination Committee to appoint an acting PCB chairman after rejecting the board’s request to allow Zaka to work as PCB chairman so that he could attend the ICC meeting scheduled later this month.

Stating that the recently held PCB polls were unfair, he claimed that even the point of holding fresh polls for electing PCB chairman was not included in the agenda of the meeting which made the entire process dubious.

Khawaja said that all the governing board members, who had attended the meeting where Zaka was elected as new PCB chairman for four years, should confirm whether proper election procedure was followed.

He demanded of the federal government to appoint an honest person to run the PCB affairs besides empowering him to probe the PCB accounts, adding that financial position of the PCB was not much healthy.