The revolving door at the head of the PCB is set to see a new man at the helm, with Mohsin Naqvi primed to take over as chairman when PCB elections are held. It is understood the elections could take place as early as next week.
The position at the top became vacant when Zaka Ashraf quit last week, a fortnight before his latest three-month extension as chairman of the Interim Management Committee (IMC) expired. He was originally appointed head of the IMC in July last year, and the mandate of the ten-member body was to finalise the Board of Governors (BoG) and conduct elections for the post of board chairman within four months. However, when that goal could not be achieved within the timeframe, the committee was given another three months to do so by the patron of the PCB, the caretaker prime minister of Pakistan, Anwar ul Haq Kakar.
Naqvi, 45, currently the caretaker Chief Minister of Punjab, has been nominated to the board of governors’ position Ashraf left vacant, which would pave the way for his election as chairman. He will continue to hold his position in government even if, as is widely expected, he wins the election for PCB chairman, at least until general elections in Pakistan are held, currently expected on February 8.
PCB election commissioner Shah Khawar has assumed temporary charge as chairman. He will conduct a meeting at the PCB headquarters at the Gaddafi Stadium on Wednesday, with the schedule of PCB elections expected to become clearer. Once elections are held, the chairman will be appointed to a three-year term.
Should Naqvi, who has never held a post in cricket administration, ascend to the chairmanship, it will end a period of over a year without a person formally elected as PCB chairman. Ramiz Raja was removed in December 2022, with Najam Sethi becoming the head of the PCB Management Committee. He quit the post in June 2023 for political reasons, saying he did not want the heads of two political parties who were then in coalition – the PPP and the PML-N – to fall out over him. It led to Ashraf’s appointment, who would then preside over a fairly chaotic term in which he was frequently accused of “flagrant misdoings and unconstitutional decisions”.
Apart from Naqvi, the other nine members of the IMC are Kalim Ullah Khan, Ashfaq Akhtar, Muhammad Mussadiq Islam, Azmat Pervez, Zaheer Abbas, Khawaja Nadeem, Mustafa Ramday, Zulfiqar Malik, and Khurram Karim Somroo.
