The Lahore region has officially been included in the 10-member Pakistan Cricket Board’s (PCB) board of governors (BoGs). The outgoing BoGs, after completing its three-year term, has approved new members of the board to run the affairs for next three years. Lahore got this seat after nine years as there is no hard and fast rule to pick the new members of the BoGs.

Lahore and Karachi are the hubs of cricket clubs. Though Karachi was included in the outgoing BoGs, Lahore remained missing, mainly because two groups were pitted against each other, when the BoGs was formed three years back.

Once the dispute was settled when Khawaja Nadeem was elected unopposed some three years back, chances for Lahore were bright to get a place in the board. Now, the elections for the Lahore region are also due next month where Khawaja Nadeem is likely to be elected unopposed as no major rival is in the scene to contest him.

In 2008, the late Aamir Hayat Rokhari was the member from the Lahore Region to represent the city in the BoGs only for one year. Then every year, the members of the BoGs were to be changed on a rotation basis. Now, every member has a three years term.

Interestingly, the new members of the BoGs were approved on the day when the patron of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Nawaz Sharif, was removed from prime minister office. Now the former patron, Nawaz Sharif, has already nominated his two nominees in the BoGs, including Najam Sethi, so, there will be no constitutional problem in electing the new chairman of the PCB next month.

The Sports Board Punjab (SBP) is trying to host an international swimming coach to train local swimmers and coaches in Lahore.

British coach Nicholas Gillingham was due in Lahore next week but there are reports that he has deferred his programme because of the last week bomb blast in Lahore. The SBP has not made any announcement. The Briton was to visit Lahore from July 31 to conduct the course till Aug 3.

The SBP has picked up 240 swimmers and 43 coaches, who will take part in the course. The coaches are selected from all over the country. The course was awarded to the Pakistan Swimming Federation by its international chapter.

The Punjab Lawn Tennis Association held the Pakistan Open Tennis championship last week. Some top ranked Pakistani players competed in the five-day event where top seed Aqeel stood winner while second seed Ushna Sohail of Lahore clinched the women’s singles title. She up set top seed Sarah Mahboob from Islamabad. Ushna is upbeat for her tennis career and she has been playing in the ITF tournaments in Egypt and Morocco.

Ushna is the only Pakistani player, whose name is included in the World Ranking. She belongs to tennis family of Iftikhar Ahmad, an All-India tennis champion.

Some other top tennis players including Abid Ali and Heera Ashiq also competed in the event.

Frank Couraud, training centres and events manager of the International Tennis Federation (ITF), visited the Pakistan Olympic Association office in Lahore last week. The ITF has done a remarkable service for Pakistan by allowing Pakistan Tennis Federation to hold the Davis Cup tie against Iran in Islamabad.

Though Iran was not ready to play in Islamabad because of security reasons, the ITF stood firm on its stance, forcing the Iranians to play or risk conceding the points.

Besides, the ITF, only FIFA, the international football’s game governing body, had also forced Hong Kong team to play the World Cup qualifying round in Lahore. Unfortunately, the International Cricket Council and the International Hockey Federation are not following such strong policies to force its members to fulfill all obligations in keeping the bilateral activities.

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2017