LAHORE: The 64th meeting of Pakistan Cricket Board’s Board of Governors (BoG) which was held here on Saturday focused on the development of cricket at the grassroots through newly-formed six cricket associations in the country.

Though the press release issued by the PCB after the meeting mentioned that the BoG received updates from the four constitutional committees — Audit Committee, Commercial Affairs Committee, Nomination Committee and Risk Management Committee — and were also presented with the chairman’s and chief executive’s reports, it carried no details about these reports.

“Three chairpersons of the First Boards of the Cricket Association — Abdullah Khan Sumbal (Central Punjab), Anwar Zeb Jan (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Cricket Association) and Muhammad Anees Khawaja (Southern Punjab Cricket Association) also attended the session as observers. The other three First Board chairpersons — Qaiser Khan Jamali (Balochistan Cricket Association), Saleem Asghar Mian (Northern Cricket Association) and Imran Hussain (Sindh Cricket Association) — will attend the 65th BoG meeting as observers,” the press release said.

“The three chairpersons made presentations on their Cricket Association’s targets and objectives, which were aimed at putting the preliminary structures in place so that a strong and robust Pakistan cricket future can be built.

“The chairpersons also shared the respective schedule of events within their jurisdiction with timelines of the clubs, schools, collegiate and university cricket. These events will commence later this year and will flow into the mid of next year.

“The BoG also noted with interest the infrastructure development plans the cricket associations have put in place. This includes developing high performance centres and acquiring playing facilities from the local administrations in cities that are presently void of these basic facilities but boast tremendous cricket talent,” it added.

“The BoG appreciated the efforts of the chairpersons and their staff for making a promising start and prioritising their targets. The BoG, while assuring their complete support from resource and funding perspectives, reiterated that special focus had to be placed on grassroots cricket to ensure activities at the lower level club and school level are resumed as early as practically possible so that the talent can be identified and channelised.”

Aasim Wajid Jawad and Javed Kureishi, members of the BoG, joined via video conference.

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2021