Crackdown concerns in Pakistan
While the motives behind the decisions to hand out bans to the Pakistan players are laudable, the haphazard manner in which they are likely to be carried out could see Pakistani cricket sink deeper into the quagmire
Judhajit
25-Feb-2013
While the motives behind the decisions to hand out bans to the Pakistan players are laudable, the haphazard manner in which they are likely to be carried out could see Pakistani cricket sink deeper into the quagmire. Rishad Mahmood, writing on the BBC website, believes the verdict has come five years too late.
There's no doubt that bad governance from politically motivated, less-than-competent cricket board officials has also contributed hugely to the current cricket scenario. More often than not, it has been the PCB heads themselves - including Lt Gen Tauqir Zia, Shaharyar Khan, Dr Nasim Ashraf and now Ijaz Butt - who have made monsters out of level-headed, talented players like Inzamam-ul-Haq, Yousuf, Shoaib Akhtar, Afridi and many others.
Digging deeper into the PCB ban, Khalid Hussain suggests that the motives behind the stunning move are not all that noble. He throws up some uncomfortable questions in his piece in the News.
It’s quite absurd actually. If things were so bad in the national team for so many months that you were forced to kick several big names out of it then what was the Board and the management it had hired to run the team was doing all that time? If Shoaib Malik and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan made so much trouble in Australia that the PCB had to ban them for a year, then what stopped it from calling them back home when the tour was still in progress? Why didn’t the team management take action against them and the other culprits then and there when it had the mandate to so?
The Nation has an editorial which agrees with most of the punishments handed out, but questions the composition of the inquiry committee, which was entirely made up of PCB members.