LAHORE: Former Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Khalid Mahmood, while criticising incumbent PCB set-up, says that by not fully implementing the new constitution despite passage of one-year the body has made a mockery of law and the system.

In an exclusive interview with Dawn on Monday, Khalid said what was going on in PCB’s affairs was amazing noting the cricket infrastructure at the grassroots level had been destroyed because of non-existent provincial associations, city associations and after abolishment of departmental cricket.

It may be mentioned here that the PCB implemented its new constitution on Aug 19, 2019 but still three major constitutional bodies — board of governors, general body and six provincial cricket associations — could not be elected under the new constitution.

Ex-chairman Khalid Mahmood speaks

“In fact one of the clauses of the new constitution binding the PCB to get registration of all the six provincial cricket associations under the company law has been included without considering a lot of complicity attached with it,” observed Khalid.

“Besides the complicity, the requirements of the company law are also difficult to understand for the club organisers who are professional in running clubs but they have no knowledge how to meet the requirements of the company law as they have to be functional under the provincial cricket association’s constitution and they must be required to follow the model constitution of the cricket associations,” he added.

“I can easily say that the idea of getting the registration under the company act is ridiculous and I don’t’ know who put it in the constitution,” he said.

“After having put flaws and not enabling to implement the new constitution in such a long time of one year is damaging cricket at the grassroots level as the cricket at the domestic level is not being held with its basic infrastructure,” Khalid remarked.

“If you can’t move on with the basic infrastructure then you are doing nothing but making mockery of the law and system,” he said.

Asked if the situation did not reflect that the PCB did not want any forum like BoG, General Body or Cricket Associations to grill it at any stage of working, Khalid said it was quite difficult for him to just imagine that all was happening deliberately.

Asked if the old BoG, which expired on Aug 8, 2020, was still existing because of having no provincial cricket associations and because one of the clause of constitution of “transitional” is giving cover to this delay in formation of BoG, General Body and Cricket Associations, Khalid said in his entire life he did not see such a long period of ‘transition’ required for implementing the new constitution.

“It seems the transitional period may be a similar attempt which was once adopted by former President of Pakistan General Zia-ul-Haq,” said Khalid sarcastically. “Zia initially came into power for 90 days on the pretext of handing charge to an elected government, but he stayed for 11 long years.”

Khalid further said that the news had come out that one cricket association, namely Northern, had been registered under the company law, but it came to fore that as many as 20 PCB staff members had been registered as founder members of that organization which is something quite unheard of.

He said no office-bearers of that Northern Association belonged to the territory which covers Islamabad, Azad Kashmir and Gilgat Baltistan.

It may be mentioned here that the PCB own constitution clearly states that no retired or serving PCB employee could be the member of the provincial or city cricket associations. But all high-ups of the PCB, barring chairman Ehsan Mani, have been registered as office-bearers of the Northern Association.

Khalid said the PCB, by abolishing departmental cricket, had discouraged the cricket of craze among the youngsters and thousands of cricketers had gone jobless. “The game now carries limited opportunities for youngsters to build their careers as cricketers,” he lamented.

“I want to ask PCB high-ups that if cricket is running without basic infrastructure, why are they appointing officials at its High Performance Centre.”

He said surprisingly it was the highest-paid cricket board in history of the PCB, but its working was reflecting immaturity in dealing with the affairs.

He also noted that unlike the last series held between England and the West Indies, the ongoing series between England and Pakistan did not adopt the slogan of “Black Lives Matter”.

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2020