LAHORE: Though the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has started the process of emailing to club organisers from May 5 in reply to their online requests for the registration, it gives only 15 days to them to submit the details about their clubs.

There are reports that the club owners feel that the 15-day period in insufficient to submit the details about their players and to get their photos and signatures on the forms sent by PCB, especially in the backdrop of the eight-day lock-down imposed during the Eid-ul-Fitr holidays.

The owners of clubs have taken a stance that since no club activities are taking place due to Covid-19 restrictions for the last many months, there is no contact between the clubs and their players and so the required information cannot be obtained in 15 days. Even the office-bearers of the clubs are not available easily.

After Eid-ul-Fitr, only five days will be left for the clubs to submit the required information to the PCB which will just not be possible for the clubs as many club have not even received the forms yet.

When the PCB officials were approached for their comments on this situation, they said: “The PCB endeavours to conclude this process at the earliest so that cricket at the grass root level can resume without any further delay.”

Interestingly, due to Covid-19 restrictions, the government has already suspended the sports activities for the last many months and there is no hope it will allow them to resume in near future.

It also needs to be mentioned here that the PCB has already wasted about 19 months of club cricket by keeping them suspended on the pretext of implementing its new constitution of Aug 19, 2019.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2021