LAHORE, Dec 4: Former captain and the newly-appointed Director General, Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Javed Miandad on Thursday unfolded his plan to resurrect domestic first-class cricket and emphasised giving more weight to the departments while restricting the association cricket by converting them into provincial outfits from the existing regional ones.
“Our cricket blossomed during the ’80s for which the main reason was departmental cricket. But in the last one decade we ignored them [departments] and focused on regional stuff and now we are at the bottom as far as our domestic standard is concerned,” said Miandad while addressing his maiden press conference since taking over the key PCB post.
Flanked by Director Cricket Academies Aamir Sohail, Miandad emphasised the importance of restructuring the domestic cricket set-up. “We will attract more departments and specially those which have closed down their doors for cricketers. Give me time, I will prove that all departments will come back,” he assured.
“In the past the departments were ignored and that discouraged them but now the PCB has plans for them and they will rejoin cricket,” he said.
Miandad added that the associations had the task to provide best players to the departments so that they could be provided jobs to solve their financial problems besides giving them opportunity to further improve their skills to emerge as an international lot.
According to Miandad’s plan, the association cricket which has been experiencing a new system every year will pass through another one.
According to his plan Lahore and Karachi, the two biggest cities, are likely to suffer as they will have to field one team each. Punjab will enter two teams — South and North — and similarly NWFP two, Sindh one and Balochistan one. Under the current system 13 teams of the 11 regions are taking part.
“We want competitive cricket at first-class level, so eight teams will represent associations in the first-class event from the next year,” he said. “The PCB would not organise all cricket at inter-district level and the associations would have to share the burden.”
Miandad said though he did not believe much in following the domestic system of other Test playing countries, Cricket Australia (CA) had one of the best systems in place which is based on six states.
“Their states are so strong as some of them even match CA as far as their financial resources and administrative skills are concerned,” he disclosed. “I want our provinces to have that kind of freedom and skill to groom and provide the best talent to the PCB,” he said.
Elaborating the importance of departmental cricket further, he cited examples of players like Inzamam-ul-Haq, Waqar Younis, Mushtaq Ahmed who, he said, were picked up from associations and given a solid platform by the departments that helped them to emerge as great players.
To a question, Miandad said he had his own vision on domestic cricket while former colleague Imran Khan had his own. “At present I am at the helm and will try and implement my own plan for domestic cricket. When Imran is in my place, he can apply his own system.
“We have been running the regional cricket system but where do we stand,” quipped Miandad. “Now former cricketers are running the board and the nation has great expectation from us.”
He said the cricketers working in the PCB will be going through some reshuffling and they could be assigned the task of coaching players in different cities and added that he would also go into the streets, villages and schools to spot the talent.