LAHORE: Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Shaharyar Khan, in a bid to address the mounting woes of national team, will be holding a round-table conference with former cricketers and experts in Lahore on March 6 and 7.

The PCB chairman has invited several renowned players of the past to sit with him and provide solutions to the rapid decline in Pakistan team’s performances in world cricket. Those cricketers include legendary players such as Imran Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, Wasim Bari, Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram, Shoaib Akhtar, Aamir Sohail, Rashid Latif, Ramiz Raja, Moin Khan, Abdul Qadir, Misbah-ul-Haq, Younus Khan, Iqbal Qasim, Bazid Khan, Aaqib Javed, Saeed Ajmal and others.

Interestingly, however, the entire coaching staff of the national team including head coach Mickey Arthur, Grant Flower, Azhar Mahmood and others have not been invited for the conference, which indicates that the key issue of foreign and local coaches will also come under discussion at the meeting.

However, many experts believe that by calling such a meeting, PCB is once again resorting to a tried-and-failed method which is unlikely to pay off. For the past many decades, it has been a trend in Pakistan cricket that whenever the national team returns home after a dismal tour or defeats at mega events like World Cups, the cricket board is quick to call such meetings or form committees comprising former cricketers to look into the causes of the debacles but the recommendations by them made are never implemented.

A PCB press release issued on Tuesday said: “Chairman PCB Shaharyar M Khan has decided to hold a round table conference of current and former Test players in Lahore on March 6 and 7, 2017 in order to seek their views on the improvement of Pakistan national and junior team’s performance.

“A selected member of Test players will be invited to attend the conference which will be co-chaired by Chief selector Inzamam-ul-Haq and Director Academies Mudassar Nazar. Head coach, NCA Mushtaq Ahmed will be the coordinator of the conference,” the press release said.

“The invitations would be extended to chairmen of committees and BoG members will also be invited to attend,” it said.

However, the agenda of the meeting is likely to be the same old one like how to improve the team performance, domestic structure, improvement of pitches, coaching of national and junior teams, encouraging foreign teams to tour Pakistan etc.

One remembers that after Pakistan team returned home without qualifying for the semi-finals of the 2014 World T20 in Bangladesh, the PCB decided to hire the services of foreign curators to improve the pitches at domestic cricket venues. But no curator was ever hired.

The same issues were raised when Pakistan also failed to impress in the 2015 World Cup and then again the 2016 World T20 but no positive measures were taken to improve the pitches which remains the main cause of the national team’s below-par show abroad.

Published in Dawn February 2nd, 2017