The Pakistan Cricket Board has been forced to replace one of its umpires, Nadeem Ghauri, on the ICC international panel after getting negative reports about his performance from the governing body.
Sources in the PCB confirmed that Ghauri was replaced on the ICC panel after the match referees made some scathing remarks about his performance.
“The referees were not happy with many aspects of Ghauri’s umpiring namely his communication skills, his ability to learn and improve, and his weak grasp on the changing laws of the sport,” a source said.
He said one incident during a series had also led to the negative report about Ghauri.
“In a recent series, Ghauri was the television umpire and when a decision was referred to him by the on field umpires he was not in his seat,” the source stated.
“PCB then decided that it was time to replace Ghauri as its nominee on the ICC umpires panel,” the source said.
PCB recently announced that while it was retaining Zameer Haider on the ICC panel, it replaced Ghauri with Ahsan Raza, while also nominating the rather unknown Sohab Raza as television umpire on the panel.
“Sohab is still young and inexperienced, but educated and understands the rules well and also has good communication skills. He got very good ratings in the umpires assessment in the domestic season and also did well in the final interviews held by the PCB to select umpires for nomination on the ICC panel,” one source said.
Pakistan also has two umpires on the elite panel for the last few years in Aleem Dar and Asad Rauf. Dar has done exceptionally well, winning the ICC umpire of the year award for the last two years.
