UMAR Akmal is often in the news for on-field feats and failures — and now for off-field activity — just as the Pakistan Cricket Board is good at keeping everyone occupied even when the source of its concern is something other than the game itself.

The two have combined to bring to the audience yet another ‘exciting’ episode. The board acts, wherever it can, as a father whose duty it is to correct an immature son.

The details about why the young cricketer was accosted this time are blurred. Little is known beyond the fact that while in Hyderabad, a post-match outing did not go down well with the PCB’s top minders.

Also read: PCB inquiry: I had permission to attend party, says Umar Akmal

So incensed were they by reports of “unethical activities” that the selectors were asked to omit Umar Akmal’s name from the team for the forthcoming T-20s against England and serve a show-cause notice on the player.

PCB chief Shaharyar Khan sounded uncharacteristically impatient in one of the initial statements that came out after the action against Umar Akmal. Najam Sethi, another senior PCB official, indicated that whereas the board wanted to investigate the affair, obstacles were being created.

As insinuations go, this apparently meant that the player or those around him were concealing something. But events since then have not quite backed that early viewpoint.

Mercifully, for a country that can ill afford another scandal involving a national cricketer there has been some show of support for the ever-battling player, who is often accused of cockiness that is not always needed and which can — indeed, has already — greatly harmed his career.

This shouldn’t have been difficult to resolve.

The PCB needed to avoid overreacting and if it had some serious initial reports that it thought it had to probe, it needed to go about it as quietly as possible before making a public announcement.

The board was required to show the same caution it has displayed in dealing with other delicate issues to avoid undue embarrassment to itself and to the players it seeks to protect and promote.

Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2015