THE Pakistan Cricket Board mostly remains under a plethora of criticism on various counts, mostly owing to the performance of national team(s). All over the world teams win and lose matches, and championships, but nowhere is the Board flogged so relentlessly in the event of a reverse as if it has not done anything right all along.

A recent case in point is runaway favourites, New Zealand, India, Australia and South Africa crashing out of the ICC World T20 2016 at various stages. Yet none of the Boards in the aforementioned countries had to undergo the kind of grilling that PCB was put through. “Heads must roll”, was the demand of the media, without any sane analysis or cogent solutions on offer.

Victory in tournaments and series is dependent on so many factors, and that is why no team wins all the time. A dispassionate look at the cricketing affairs however makes it abundantly clear that an organisation that has coped with so much adversity with such aplomb cannot be that poorly run.

If anything, had such conditions prevailed elsewhere, it would have been extremely difficult for the Board to field a competitive outfit or stay solvent — like the West Indies was until recent past and still is where Test cricket is concerned.

A case in point: no top nation has visited Pakistan since March 2009, when the unfortunate terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka team in Lahore turned the country into a no-go area; in fact, not many frontline teams have come over since the early 2000s, the Aussies having visited us last in 1998.

In the last three years, when Najam Sethi was appointed chairman in 2013, the PCB was put in the ‘dock’ by ‘interested’ parties. The international environment had turned hostile as around the same time the issue of ‘Big Three’ taking charge of global cricket had put its detractor Pakistan in dire straits. Things took a turn for the worse when all its allies left it in the lurch to hitch their wagons to the troika on the rise. The PCB hierarchy worked its way through a quagmire littered with landmines, to deliver safety and prosperity.

Before he gave way for Shaharyar M. Khan to take over as chairman, Sethi had deftly negotiated to restore Pakistan at number four, right below the then-so-called Big Three in terms of status and share in ICC’s earnings. Pakistan was also given representation in the world body’s then all-powerful executive committee and its chunk in future tour programme too stood enhanced.

In fact, apart from fortunes mostly on the ebbing side in one-dayers and T20 Internationals, Pakistan cricket has mostly been upwardly mobile — especially in the realm of administration, transparency and backing merit, which culminated in the PSL being launched successfully and profitably against a variety of odds much similar to those that had seen it abandoned twice before under the Zaka Ashraf dispensation.

Another contribution that needs to be mentioned is promulgation of the new constitution in 2013. Not just democratic, the new constitution also includes all major stakeholders in the Board of Governors, ensuring that PCB functions as a smooth entity. Above all, by giving the powers of oversight to the BoG, accountability and transparency also stand guaranteed.

The Board has also added new revenue streams and enhanced the existing one, especially with the PSL venture — which in the years to come may turn out to be one of the greatest strengths of Pakistan cricket, much in the mould of what IPL has been to BCCI.

The incumbent chairman, Shaharyar Khan, has relaunched school cricket after an interregnum that lasted a full decade and has rung changes in the entire line-up of selectors, captains and game development administrators, bringing in such proven articles as Inzamam-ul-Haq for chief selector and Mudassar Nazar as head of game development, plucking the latter from the ICC Global Academy of Excellence in Dubai. The ideas and energy that the duo brings, along with Sarfraz’s elevation as T20 skipper, is likely to put Team Pakistan on the path of rejuvenation in all three formats of the game.

Another important Shaharyar Khan initiative is handing over the biomechanics lab apparatus to Pakistan’s standout academic institution, the Lahore University of Management Sciences. This super-expensive apparatus was rotting at the NCA for the last eight years. Now Pakistan cricket would stand to benefit from it without any additional investment, with the LUMS’ Syed Babar Ali Institute of Science and Engineering lending it its critically acclaimed support.

The writer is a former Test batsman

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2016