Former officials of Lahore City Cricket Association (LCCA) have welcomed the decision of Pakistan Cricket Board(PCB) for dissolving the interim committees running the affairs of the regional cricket bodies across the country.
“PCB has taken a good decision by dissolving the interim committees and placing the regional bodies under its domestic cricket department till the elections are completed in the respective regional bodies”, said former President, LCCA, Khawaja Nadeem Ahmad, Secretary, Mian Javed Ali, Treasurer, Sarfraz Ahmad, Vice President, Imran Bucha and Sardar Noushad ,President Cricket Centre model town here in a joint to APP on Wednesday.
They said PCB has realized that these committees were not working in the right direction as far as promotion of cricket at grassroot’s level was concerned.
“Take the example of Lahore where cricket suffered during the six month tenure of chairman of the interim committee,Aizad Hussain Syed,who took autocratic decisions to ruin the cricket activities at club level”,they said adding,”PCB knowing the situation finally decided to break up the interim setup which is a wise decision”.
They termed interim committee tenure “black era” in Lahore cricket as teams selected for the Quaid-e-Azam trophy grade one tournament comprised non-deserving players which resulted in poor performance of Lahore’s both teams in the ongoing first class cricket season.
“Look at the performance of Lahore Ravi team which lost three of its matches where as Lahore Shalimar lost two matches which speak volume of inclusion of players through back doors in the respective sides”, they asserted.
The former officials said when the interim setup was imposed by PCB they left Rs 1.6 million in the kitty of LCCA and interim committee chairman spent the entire amount on organizing cricket receptions rather spending the money on organizing cricket tournament at club level.
“We gathered that money from private business houses for holding cricket leagues and other tournaments and it was unfortunate that the money was not spent in the right direction and interim committee chairman used it for his own publicity”, they said.
LCCA officials said they will be approaching the PCB to lodge their complaint on this issue. “Putting regional cricket bodies under interim set up did not serve any purpose as the cricket activities at early level were suspended because the interim set ups had no interest in the development of cricket”,they said, adding,”elected people are answerable to public and during our previous three year tenure we launched collective efforts for the betterment and revival of cricket in Lahore and due to our positive measures LCCA once again got the status of a role model regional cricket body”.
