PCB approves budget after four-month delay

The much-delayed and much-objected budgets of the PCB from 2007-08 and 2009-10 have finally been approved by the board of governors. The budget for the current year was approved after a four-month delay - it should've been approved by July 1 - amounting to, according to reports, roughly Rs1.5 billion.

Wazir Ali Khoja, a member of the governing board, told reporters after the meeting in Lahore that the budget had been approved and that one from 2007-08 had also been given conditional approval. That budget, from the administration of Nasim Ashraf, chairman of the board before Ijaz Butt, had been the subject of much scrutiny and objection. One believed to be among them is the alleged substantial golden handshake payment made to Inzamam-ul-Haq upon his retirement from Test cricket in October 2007.

But the budget had to be passed, with some conditions to rectify the objections, because grant payments from the ICC would not otherwise be released to Pakistan - or any member nation - unless the budget had been given approval by the governing body.

Butt, who was a governing board member himself under Ashraf, had raised objections to the budget even then, though the issue was never satisfactorily resolved.