The dust hasn’t really settled yet. Was Sethi let go or did he quit? Whichever of the two you believe, it appears that the reason was the same. Conflict of interest. That it was improper to hold the position of PCB chairman and that of a TV pundit simultaneously.
If that indeed is the reason, one wonders why this brainwave came right about now. Four years too late?
If it were the government at whose behest this decision was taken, even that is odd. Having your top cricket guy at a channel generally believed to be in your favour still isn’t as bad as your cricket Czar being the same guy who stewarded the county’s biggest province (your party’s support base) during the elections. Not to mention a person who, even if incorrectly, is accused of rigging the elections in your favour.
There would be more to it considering how his wife, Jugnu Mohsin, has also left the channel, where she had only just started hostingKhabarnaak. It was an ambitious project and a challenging one, hosting that potentially influential comedy show. I guess we will never know what would have been.
Her departure takes some wind out of the conflict of interest argument. Unless, she is also turning up the heat in her own election campaign. Insiders claim that the lady is vying for a PML(N) ticket in Okara.
It has been an eventful life, Sethi’s. Even if one were not to think of his earlier adventures, like book piracy or adventures in Balochistan, or even the incarceration during Nawaz Sharif’s second tenure, and focus just on his later career, there is plenty to write about. He set up what was, for the time, a very exciting new newspaper. And, though it was thought he could only hold his own in the boutique English press, he has had a pretty decent career as a pundit on Urdu television. At a point when one thought he had gone as high as he could have, he was made the caretaker chief minister of the Punjab. And if one would have thought that that was the twilight of his career, he was given charge of the cricket board.
One has learnt not to underestimate the upward trajectory of Sethi’s career – though how can he possibly improve on his already impressive CV? – but it is the PCB that will prove to be his Vietnam. His Russian winter.
For starters, he isn’t doing all too good a job. New talent isn’t being developed. The departure of Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan has left the team nigh rudderless. All that happened on Sethi’s watch. Yes, he is not the chairman anymore, but still calls the shots around there, not just as eminence grise but as chair of the executive committee. And is set to become the chairman again.
Even if he were to really put his shoulder to the task and get the Board’s act together in finding and then grooming new talent, there are some things that are out of his control. Foreign teams won’t play in the country because of the security situation and that is going to be an impediment on the team’s growth, regardless of how well it is developed.
Even if the security situation were to remain somewhat the same, but the misadventures of Pakistan-based superheroes across the Radcliffe were to cease, it would mean a thawing of relations with India and the possibility of Pakistani players being bid on in the where-its-at of modern cricket: the IPL.
But the powers that be, being what they are, won’t change that line of action either.
