Just as the crunch time has come for decisions on taking part in the Asia Cup or the World Cup have come, the Pakistan Cricket Board has imploded. At the root of this imbroglio is the fact that the post of PCB Chairman lies in the PM’s patronage. As the negotiations over the fate of the two Cups drew to a close, the PCB Chairman, Rameez Raja, who has been named to the post by Prime Minister Imran Khan, was removed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and replaced by Najam Sethi who was made chairman of an interim committee. That committee was dissolved with the reconstitution of the Board, and this time the PM’s nominee was Zaka Ashraf, who was the PPP nominee for the job. In the meantime, until that election is held, the government authorized the election commissioner to run the PCB’s affairs. First the Balochistan High Court stayed the election, and the election commissioner’s notification has been challenged in the Islamabad High Court.
It is amazing that first politics, then coalition wranglings, have left the PCB leaderless at this critical juncture. The PCB has written to the Prime Minister, with copies to the Interior and Foreign Ministries, asking for permission to go to India for the World Cup. It has already had to face the Indian attempt to sabotage the Asia Cup by India refusing to play in Pakistan. That too was only possible because India’s BCCI is also under the government’s thumb. The solution would be to give the Boards their independence. And considering how large the BCCI looms in world cricket, the Indian government can interfere too much in the game generally. Governments should stay out of sport, but the temptation is too strong, especially when it means doing down the other, Of the two great rivalries in sport, Australia-England is restricted to cricket. Unfortunately, Pakistan-India is not restricted to cricket, or indeed sport. Patriotic fervour adds zest to sporting encounters, but it can only be displayed if those encounters take place. Politicians of all stripes and from all countries must realize this, and the game must be allowed to win. The World Cup has already lost the winner of the first two editions, the West Indies, because they failed to qualify. But that is a sporting reason; the real tragedy would be if it lost the winner of the fourth edition to politics.
