Shaharyar Khan has been PCB chairman since August 2014 © PCB
Shaharyar Khan has tendered his resignation from the post of PCB chairman and is expected to step down after the ICC’s annual conference in June. Speaking to reporters in Lahore, soon after a meeting with his board members, the 83-year old Shaharyar said his decision was influenced by “personal and health reasons”.
ESPNcricinfo has subsequently learnt that he has also been under pressure to make way for Najam Sethi, who has been working towards the becoming head of the PCB for the past year and a half.
Shaharyar was unanimously elected to lead the PCB by the board of governors in August 2014. He had intended to resign with immediate effect – his tenure ends only in August 2017 – but with the ICC in the middle of restructuring its constitution and Shaharyar’s support being vital to the cause, he has decided to continue at the helm of the PCB until the ICC annual conference in June.
“I have taken the board in confidence and conveyed my decision that I will not continue after our mandate is ending on August 18,” Shaharyar told reporters after chairing a board meeting in Lahore. “I will not continue after it as chairman or as in any other capacity and it’s my decision on the basis of personal and health reasons. I have also written to the Patron of PCB who is Prime Minister that I am ready to resign and whenever he deems reasonable he can accept it. And thereafter whatever the legal process constituted, allow it to exercised to bring in my successor.”
Sources in the Prime Minister’s office in Islamabad confirmed on Thursday that they have yet to receive Shaharyar’s resignation and had only learnt of his decision through the media. According to the PCB constitution, it is the the Patron who makes the first move to pick the new chairman. His request to the election commissioner to hold fresh elections prompts a meeting of the board of governors, who would then select a candidate from among themselves through a majority vote. All of this must be done within four weeks of the chairman’s office becoming vacant.
Sethi has wanted to be the head of the PCB since 2013. Indeed he had taken over leadership of the board several times over a two-year period before a Supreme Court intervention in 2014 led to his ouster. He was later appointed head of a newly-created Executive Committee, and though its power was limited only to making recommendations, Sethi exerted considerable influence over major decisions within the board. His position as chairman of the Pakistan Super League has also helped extend his reach into various departments of the PCB including media, social media, marketing and commercial interests.
All this led to the potential for friction at the top of the PCB, something former coach Waqar Younis had alluded to after the World T20 in 2016 when he blasted the lack of administrative direction in Pakistan cricket, asserting that “two heads” were pulling the game in “two different directions”.
Umar Farooq is ESPNcricinfo’s Pakistan correspondent
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo