PCB election 'a matter of days', says acting chairman

The PCB's acting chairman, Muhammad Sair Ali, has stressed that he wants to conduct elections for the board chief's position quickly and is not keen to continue for too long in his current role. Sair was put in charge of the PCB as acting chairman on Monday and was directed by Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister of Pakistan and Patron of the PCB, to ensure that elections are held within 30 days.

"I'm not be very keen to continue as acting chairman or even assert my unnecessary authority, whether I have it or not," Sair said, at the PCB headquarters in Lahore. "It [election] is a matter of days and it won't take weeks. I have written to all the regions and department to mark their heads and be ready for the election process. In case any regional association is disputed, the election will go ahead without them."

The PCB recently reworked its constitution, changing the structure of the governing board and making the appointment of the chairman more democratic. The Board of Governors was also resized to 10 members, comprising four regional representations (top four teams from the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy), four representatives of services organisations (top four department teams) and two members to be nominated by the patron in his discretion.

On Monday, senior journalist Najam Sethi, who has been at the helm of the PCB several times over the past year, and former board chairman, Shaharyar Khan, were nominated to the BoG and Ali said that he had written to the concerned departments and regions to name the remaining eight members.

The chairman will be elected from among those in the BoG, and, with Sethi having said that he will not contest the election, Shaharyar Khan is seen as a leading contender.

There have been multiple changes of leadership in the PCB since May 2013, when Zaka Ashraf became the first elected PCB chairman. The Islamabad High Court ruled those elections as 'dubious' and Sethi was put in charge of the PCB by the government. Ashraf and Sethi have alternately been re-appointed and sacked from the post several times over the past year. Last month, Sethi was removed and reinstated in the space of two days.