LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board has signed a contract with a private party to build and operate fitness centres within PCB’s premises at the National High Performance Centres in Lahore and Karachi.

The work on these projects is expected to start soon after Eid-ul-Fitr holidays.

Though it is a profit-sharing project, the first of its kind signed between the PCB and a private party, the board does not seem willing to disclose to the media how much profit it will earn.

“Yes, we have signed a contract with TriFit company after a re-tendering according to which the PCB will provide the private party 6000 square feet land, each at the National High Performance Centres in Lahore and Karachi to build and operate fitness centres for private clients,” a PCB spokesman said on Monday. “Pakistani cricketers, however, will have no link with these fitness centres as they will use PCB’s own fitness centres already working at the NHPCs.”

Interestingly, the land allocated for the fitness centre project at the NHPC in Lahore is the same where the PCB had planned to set up a bio-mechanics lab way back in the mid of 2000. This lab was left half constructed as the PCB set up the lab at the Lahure University of Manag­e­ment Sciences (LUMS) during Shaharyar Khan’s tenure. Though the bio-mechanics lab at LUMS is a PCB property, till Mudassar Nazar’s tenure as head of the then National Cricket Acad­emy (now NHPC) there were no working links bet­ween the PCB and the lab.

Meanwhile, it is learnt that the first tender for the project of private fitness centre was cancelled as the PCB disqualified all the bidders and then re-tendered it in which two parties appeared. Bes­ides TriFit, Shapes was the second party, but the latter was only showing interest in Karachi’s project whereas the PCB was interested in awa­r­ding both the projects to one party.

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2021