Ramiz Raja SACKED – PCB New Chairman: As expected, Ramiz Raja has been sacked as Pakistan Cricket Board Chairman. The Prime Minister…
Ramiz Raja SACKED – PCB New Chairman: As expected, Ramiz Raja has been sacked as Pakistan Cricket Board Chairman. The Prime Minister of Pakistan, who is also the Patron of the board formally initiated the move to oust Raja from Chairmanship. A new 14-member committee headed by Najam Sethi will be formally announced today. The committee includes former Pakistan cricketers Shahid Afridi and Sana Mir: Follow Cricket News LIVE Updates with InsideSport.IN
The cricket regime headed by Ramiz Raja @iramizraja is no more. The 2014 PCB constitution stands restored. The Management Committee will work tirelessly to revive first class cricket. Thousands of cricketers will be employed again. The famine in cricket will come to an end.
— Najam Sethi (@najamsethi) December 21, 2022
Raja’s position had been on flimsy grounds ever since Imran Khan was removed as Prime Minister in April this year. Raja, 60, was elected unanimously and unopposed as the board’s 36th chairman in September 2021 with the 1992 World Cup-winning captain nominating his former teammate on the PCB Board of Governors (BoG). During Raja’s tenure, Pakistan made the semifinals and finals of successive T20 World Cups, played the final of the Asia Cup and welcomed Australia and England to their shores, signalling the full-fledged return of international cricket at home.
Pending a legal vetting of the change, Raja will be replaced by Sethi, who has served as the head of PCB in multiple positions between 2003 and 2018. He was also the first chairman of the Pakistan Super League and oversaw the conception of the league in 2016. His committee will now have a four-month period during which they’ll be tasked with restoring the PCB constitution to its 2014 version.
One of the main reasons for the constitutional revamp is to have departmental teams like WAPDA, PIA and SNGPL back in the country’s first-class circuit. In the Imran Khan-ratified version of the constitution in 2019, the PCB chose to do away with the departments that have historically been associated with the game in the country so as to streamline the cricketing structure into six regional sides – Northern, Sindh, Central Punjab, Balochistan, Southern Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – mirroring that of Australia’s.
While the original move to abolish the historic structure in domestic cricket had its merits, the PCB was also criticised for the move for it rendered several cricketers employed by these departments jobless in a beat.
Meanwhile, Babar Azam’s position as captain of the senior men’s team is unlikely to be affected by the management restructuring just yet, even though murmurs of a change have grown since the team’s 3-0 whitewash by England in the just-concluded Test series. Historically in Pakistan cricket, a change in PCB administration has been followed by new leaders in the team but Azam has been named to lead the side for the forthcoming New Zealand series and will be expected to continue into the new year.
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