LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Wednesday yet again displayed its incompetence in administrative affairs when it named former Test opener Mohammad Ilyas as chairman of women’s selection committee while retaining Basit Ali as the head of junior selection committee besides naming Kabir Khan as head coach of the women’s team — a good two weeks after the women’s squad was named for the World Cup qualifiers on Jan 6.

It is perplexing that when both Ilyas and previous chief selector Basit — who was removed on Jan 2 following a nasty brawl with former player Mahmood Hamid — were not in office, who really selected and named the women’s squad for the qualifiers.

While removing Basit from his earlier duties earleir this month, the PCB had issued a press release in this regard but later PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan said that Basit would continue as junior chief selector but not as head coach or chief selector of the women’s team.

When asked if any changes are likely in the already announced women’s squad for World Cup qualifiers, new chief selector Ilyas ruled it out and said the final squad had already been forwarded to the ICC.

It may be mentioned here that this is the second assignment for Ilyas in the Board while he is also working at the National Cricket Academy towards hosting a national-level club tournament this year. Ilyas had previously also performed as head of the women and junior selection committee and for some months as head of the senior selection committee during the regme of Ijaz Butt as well as for a brief period in Zaka Ashraf’s tenure.

Meanwhile, Farrukh Zaman has been pulled out from the women’s selection committee and has been inducted in the junior selection committee as one of its five members which has Basit as its chairman.

The new junior selection committee comprises: Basit Ali (chairman), Farrukh Zaman, Aamir Nazir, Sanaullah Baloch, Ali Zia (members).

National women selection committee: Mohammad Ilyas (chairman), Nadeem Abbasi, Urooj Mumtaz (members), Kabir Khan (ex-officio).

Women’s team management: Kabir Khan (head coach), Shahid Anwar (batting coach).

Published in Dawn January 19th, 2017