ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Chief Minis­ter Punjab Mohsin Naqvi has emerged as the frontrunner to become the new chairman of the Pakistan Cric­ket Board’s (PCB) interim Management Committee, sources told Dawn on Monday.

The media mogul, according to sources, has the backing of caretaker Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar — who is also the PCB’s patron-in-chief — to take up the role.

Mohsin’s appointment in the position would mean he will also fill the spot left vacant in the PCB’s Board of Governors by former chief Zaka Ashraf, who stepped down from the post last week.

There’s also a high likelihood for Mohsin the be elected as the PCB chief when it’s long-awaited polls are held. But till then, Mohsin will be the third consecutive interim Management Committee chief of the board.

On Friday, Zaka had tendered his resignation from the position, two weeks before the expiry of the committee’s tenure that he had headed.

He tendered resignation three days after the Ministry of Inter-Provincial Coordination (IPC) had disallowed him from holding an MC meeting wherein he was supposed to form the BoG, which is the first step to hold the elections of PCB chairman for a three-year term.

The PCB is being run on adhoc basis since December 2022 when Ramiz Raja was removed from the post by the then prime minister Shehbaz Sharif. He was replaced by Najam Sethi as head of the interim committee, which was mainly tasked to conduct elections. But Sethi met the same fate as Ramiz later when Zaka took his place.

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2024