LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Monday stated that it had included its staffers in the six cricket associations as a transitory and administrative step with the sole purpose of facilitating and expediting the registration process, and the staffers will resign as soon as the interim committees are constituted.

Emphasising that there is no bar in the PCB Constitution 2019 on its employees being founding members of a society for any cricket association to get it registered, the PCB went on to ad: “This is a temporary administrative arrangement that has been adopted as this was the most time efficient, reliable and logistically convenient mechanism for the registration of all six cricket associations.”

“No PCB staffer will be a member of the interim committees when these are put in place to run the day-to-day affairs of the cricket associations till the elected personnel take over.

“This is important because PCB’s vision is that these bodies will run their cricket independently with PCB overseeing as a regulatory body and assisting where required only,” said the PCB statement.

The PCB also vehemently denied it had allocated or released any funds to the cricket associations that, in turn, will be managed by the PCB staff. It said the allocation of funds, if required, will be considered by the PCB under Clause 16(9) of the PCB Constitution 2019.

“The current PCB set-up is in the process of decentralising and democratising domestic cricket, and for the first time in the PCB’s history and as part of good governance practices, introduced the Code of Ethics.”

“As such, the PCB believes it was unfair to malign, accuse and criticise it of breaching the PCB and Model Constitutions on selected, misleading and incomplete information. The PCB firmly believes in transparency and meritocracy, and will continue to display these with its actions and performances.”

“The next step is to constitute interim committees to:

a) adopt the model constitution, and b) to run the affairs of the associations till the duly elected representatives take offices.

To elect the first office-bearers, prior logical steps have to be completed;

a) clubs registered with City Cricket Associations, b) general body elects office-bearers of City Cricket Associations, and c) the elected representatives of City Cricket Associations form the general body of the Cricket Associations,” concluded the statement.

Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2020