LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is planning to hold its Annual General Body meeting in near future, despite the fact its only three full members, out of 11, qualify to attend it because of a dysfunctional domestic structure on which all the domestic affairs have been running for the last three years, as a result of the new constitution introduced on Aug 19, 2019.

Surprisingly, before the constitution of 2019, 100-plus elected representatives of all districts of Pakistan besides deaf and blind cricket associations were members of the general body.

But under the new constitution all the representatives working at grassroots as elected office-bearers of the district associations were shown the door as the general body was reduced to just 11 members including two working as ex-officio members.

According to the the PCB constitution, only PCB chairman and presidents of Pakistan deaf and blind cricket associations can qualify for the body’s meeting as full members, besides two ex-officio members including chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

The other six members are the presidents of the six Provincial Cricket Associations.

But due to PCB’s snail-paced approach in registering clubs across the country and scrutinising them before the elections are held at district and provincial levels, three years have passed and still no representative of these six provincial bodies — except for deaf and blind associations — is available to attend the meeting.

Interestingly, the same situation exists at the PCB Board of Governors (BoG), which is the supreme body having the authority to make policy decisions.

Overall, BoG has nine members and among them only three are elected presidents of the provincial cricket associations on rotation basis while the remaining six are nominated persons, which gives a clear edge to the nominated persons over the elected ones.

Moreover, all three presidents of the elected provincial cricket associations are not included the BoG because the elections from club to provincial level have not been held yet during the past three years.

In its previous constitution, the BoG was more inclusive as eight members — four each from departments and regional cricket associations — were part of it, and all of them had a direct link with the country’s domestic cricket.

However now under the new constitution, out of a total of nine members six are nominated.

Two nominations are to be made by the prime minister, between one of them can only contest the elections of PCB chairman. Four members are to be nominated by a PCB Nomination Committee, while three seats are reserved for the six provincial cricket associations on rotation basis but they are also not available due to delay in holding the elections from club to provincial level.

Published in Dawn,May 3rd, 2022