PCB Complaint

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Salam Pakistan,

Pak People
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By Dr Nauman Niaz

With eight years of Ad hocism our cricket has lived through more than its share of difficulties. From coping with the changing methods of cricket in the 2000s, experimenting with first-class cricket and managements embroiled in player-power has come easily. First we lost our number three place on the ICC Test Rankings, languishing at seventh and asked to cope with the 'periods' of transition and implementation of preposterous policies, we have to live in a constant state of disarray.

We have survived alternate bouts of Ad hocism and autocratic democrats, were subjected to experiments to change the constitution, to make PCB modern and also asked to endure single-minded, power-yielding captains. And now cope with something called 'Corporate' PCB with another constitution ready to be implemented.

How the new constitution would give space to PCB's corporate high flyers is still not very clear. Through these upheavals, we haven't found a formula to keep all of our people committed to a common vision of cricketing progress.

We are today mired in a debilitating conflict in the selection of the Pakistan team, face a breakdown of cricket's governance in different parts of the country and experience meaningless random acts from the stalwarts (ex-Berkley graduates, ex-Pakistan Military Academy stars, portly doctors) of the PCB organisation.

On the ideological level, we don't know whether we have a corporate set-up with liberal pretensions or a worldly board paying lip service to the vision of corporate governance. Even the exercise of power at the highest level of governance is delusive with an enterprising chairman, though extremely sensitive to criticism and wobbly directors making democratic claims and behaving like dictators.

Like his predecessors, Dr Nasim Ashraf hasn't been an exception, as they should have been an instrument of the board became the arbiters of game's destiny and their personnel rule through artifices and maneuvering or another. To make their power grab easier they have often sabotaged the norms, veiling their frailties in different wrappers such as 'new constitutions' etcetera, have subverted the first-class set-ups including the basic democracy previously prevalent in the regions and associations, and have made cricket's machinery a shaggy dog story.

The ways the previous chairmen and the current one attained autonomy will make it impossible for any future sovereign man to exercise control over it.

Chairmen in Ad hoc systems are usually with a stiff upper lip, their path to the board's control becomes easy with unqualified people swarming around them, and fitting into powerful slots. Then, they have been using their media 'connections' to not only arm and equip themselves, but also to browbeat all other contenders for power within or outside the system. This support however comes with price tags. And subsequently, these capable and insightful chairmen become instruments of people with macro agendas.

Recently, the PCB inadvertently or deliberately became players in the cold war of the cricketers against authority and defections. To some, the PCB chain of command has worked as power-brokers in getting some of their top players contracted with the Indian Premier League. Such was their unconventional loyalty to the BCCI and the IPL that they enticed Mohammad Yousuf to defect from the Indian Cricket League (ICL). In return what they are supposed to get, their regime acceptability and benefits is still not decipherable. ICL are contemplating filing a legal suit against Yousuf; in this context, PCB's future role is surely going to be very interesting.

The current support for Dr Nasim Ashraf within the board and to some extent within the regions and associations hinges on his perceived role in the evolution and implementation of the 'new' constitution. Interestingly, with this latest constitution's implementation, if it is ever employed Dr Nasim would need greater legitimacy and wider public support to take radical decisions with reference to grassroots development and spending huge budgets.

This would create the circumstances for him to stage a comeback, to find firm footing which he nearly lost in his topsy-turvy run so far. With a strong Board of Governors may well be a reward of his assiduous cultivation of the 'corporate' establishment and his part as an honest negotiator to help clinching an extended role in the country's cricket, say for at least the next three to five years.

To some, Dr Nasim's future in cricket would depend on his political ambitions. Dr Nasim was an above average nephrologist in the United States of America but quit medicine to explore other mainstream, more publicly prominent careers. To some, he has tried to use cricket as a tool for evolving his political base. Once the strategic scenario is worked out, its tactical unfolding while colourful is inconsequential. Dr Nasim arrived in October 2006 to a turbulent welcome and it provided the right kind of optics but without him fitting in a broader perspective this would not have been possible.

The next step for Dr Nasim is to put into effect the new constitution, which on paper does not seem easy because he has lost a great deal of genuine support of people who were looking towards him as country's cricket's light. However we have seen in the past that once such things have been ordained, survival itself is just a formality. Nasim by virtue of his appointments and re-designations at PCB's head office in Lahore now may not be able to get a level playing field and if he digs up that, he may well be the man to watch in the next six months or so.

It seems the new constitution would come, with its rights and wrongs still having Dr Nasim's role to continue in office and keep working for cricket in Pakistan. So far, his run has been mostly disruptive, with sporadic moments of brilliance. Keeping in view, the character and tone of the regions, associations and ex-players, not all, may well become major partners in a set-up powerfully run by him.

Dr Nasim picked a handful of people to give value to his 'corporate' vision and seemingly, he didn't take immense trouble and didn't interfere so blatantly in his team's working because he may well have had a particular fondness for either the personalities of Mr Shafqat Naghmi and Nadeem Akram or Zakir Khan. He would want his team to deliver, now and after the implementation of the constitution.

It hardly seems a fact that Dr Nasim's dream team (a quartet of directors) would be able to deliver. Dr Nasim's highbrow team including a doctor with a penchant of being in the news hasn't been able to impress either. Dr Nasim's workforce has been a huge disappointment. And holding on, not relinquishing their seats of power despite ample evidence of complete failure to give a corporate shape to the PCB, they would rather try getting their workspace sealed and criticism physically eliminated.

PCB has shaken up all previous traditions offering unlimited financial rewards to the players, team management, even the masseurs. Luckily, there wasn't any sanitary worker otherwise he would have also been given Rs 1.25 M. It seemed a swift drifting to 'buy and hi' approach. With PCB being veiled as a 'corporate' enterprise and its new culture being promulgated by Dr Nasim's three most powerful directors, the beneficiaries themselves, often argue, as in one of the television programmes Shafqat Naghmi tried to justify giving huge signing amounts to the cricketers in addition to the exorbitant contractual remuneration and also the performance based rewards, emphasizing that such traditions were common in the corporate world to seek loyalty of the employees.

Isn't it an expensive method of seeking loyalty of the employees? It showed Mr Naghmi as nonchalant, an undaunted director in a supervisory role of an organisation where money comes easy through television rights and cricket's added value.

Dr Nasim is already engaged in changing PCB's doctrinaire and conservative systems, but his best efforts often lack legitimacy and are not fully accepted. He, despite rebuttals seemed unpopular and his working-team at Lahore making the goings even more difficult for him; there is a hope that addition of high profiled cricketers in the Board of Governors and in his government after PCB implements its new constitution there would be greater public backing for Pakistan's new cricket conflict. This is the kind of partnership Dr Nasim may well have been looking for.

Instead of having a new constitution where from eleven regions, only five representatives are allowed to sit on the Board of Governors (and at least one from each province), creating insecurities, the PCB could have negotiated a new curriculum and a new direction for administering cricket at the regional level. All of this could have required engagement not conflict.

Cricket politics in Pakistan has many faces and no single tactic can be successful everywhere. For example, cricket power within the associations is a by-product of influence of an indiviudal or his person or traditional conservatism. It has little to do with the ideology, constitution or merit or any other form of deep-seated values or attitude. Since, most of the associations and regions are dependent completely on the cricket board, without actually getting interruptive it is thus something that can be rooted out by force -- so why did we need a new constitution?

In the developed world, constitutions are implemented in letter and spirit, where the counties or states own the cricket board. In Pakistan it's the opposite. Here, the regions and associations are completely dependent on the PCB, standing up with begging bowls. So if they can't be stakeholders why should they be given their share of power on the board of governors or councils?

Unfortunately, this combination of dictatorship and democracy cannot be provided by Dr Nasim Ashraf and his corporate combine. They are reviled figures in the eyes of cricket conventionalists and not acceptable to them as fair interlocutors or negotiating partners.