Taking a timely decision amid concerns over abolition of the departmental teams, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Wednesday included former Test spinner Iqbal Qasim in the domestic game restructure committee tasked with making improvements in the country’s domestic circuit.
A PCB press release stated: “A presentation on the domestic cricket structure was given by Haroon Rasheed, director game development, to PCB chairman and some members of the PCB management committee. After deliberations, the chairman constituted the following committee to work on the domestic structure with a view to making improvements and optimising the available resources: Zaheer Abbas (chairman), Iqbal Qasim, Haroon Rasheed, Shakil Shaikh (members).
“The committee will look into the issues being faced in domestic cricket including the role of departments, regions and districts and will make recommendations for making improvements in the structure,” the press release added.
Interestingly, missing in the aforementioned committee is PCB director domestic cricket Intikhab Alam who, otherwise, could play an important role since the matter concerns his department directly.
Initial outlines of the proposed structure revamp have triggered a controversy as some strong concerns were expressed on PCB’s supposed plans to eliminate departmental cricket, confining departments’ role to just sponsoring a region, in reorganising the domestic game.
The departments, on their part, have shown great resentment over the proposed restructure plan. Iqbal Qasim, an experienced head of the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) sports department, has even threatened to resign from his post on the PCB management committee, in protest against the revamp proposal.
It is feared that around 700 cricketers currently on the payroll of these departments would have lost their jobs in case the PCB does not change its domestic cricket restructure plan.
Iqbal, bitterly against the elimination of departmental cricket, along with other departments have stood firm against the move. And now his inclusion in the review committee has certainly provided him the right platform to assert his stance on the important subject more forcefully.
Earlier, the idea to eliminate departmental cricket was forwarded by Haroon who somehow believed the departments due to having several over-aged players in their squads were not contributing their due role in promoting cricket in the country.
However, contrary to this notion according to a list of these teams, all the ten departmental outfits have players with average age of below 30 years, which is by no means alarming.
It is being regretted by many that instead of pushing the departments to also raise separate U-19 and U-23 squads in order to accommodate young cricketers, and to construct their own stadiums, Haroon recommended ending departmental cricket while only giving them the role of sponsoring regions.
Interestingly, various departments have no constitutional authority to sponsor any other institution. Therefore, on the face of it adjusting the departments with regions seems an impossible proposition.
