Shaharyar Khan to oppose shifting PCB headquarters to Islamabad

The Pakistan senate's devolution committee, which oversees relations between the country's various provinces and the federation, has invited PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan to Islamabad to discuss the feasibility of shifting the board's headquarters from Lahore to Islamabad. The resolution to shift it was moved last month, by senator Sardar Muhammad Azam Khan Musakhel, who recommended that the PCB is a "symbol of State" and so it should be in Islamabad - the capital of Pakistan.

The senate functioning committee issued a notification on Monday, taking up the matter referred to it by the senate, the upper house of Pakistan's parliament, on October 5. The PCB chairman confirmed that he is going to attend the meeting and will oppose the move. "This is not feasible at all," Khan told ESPNcricinfo. "Shifting costs a lot of money and we don't want to pay for that, in fact we don't have the money neither do we have any office in Islamabad to shift to."

"Hockey, football and almost every top sports federation is in Lahore and also national organisations like Pakistan International Airlines, National Bank of Pakistan, their headquarters are in Karachi, then why dislodge PCB? We will convey to them the ground realities, this [shifting] is not an easy thing to do. We had had a land in Islamabad given by Capital Development Authority (CDA), which was also cancelled."

During Zaka Ashraf's tenure, the CDA had allotted 35 acres of land for the establishment of a stadium in the Shakarparian area of Islamabad. PCB planned to build the biggest stadium in the country there, with a capacity of capacity of 50,000, as well as a cricket academy and lodging facility, but soon after Ashraf's tenure ended the land was taken back and the whole project was cancelled.

On October 5 last month, the resolution to shift the headquarters was debated by various senators, before it ended up being passed to the 14-man devolution committee for further debate. Senator Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo heads the committee, which includes two members - senators Muhammad Usman Khan Kakar and Mohsin Aziz - who had endorsed the resolution.