Majid Khan demands removal of PCB chief

LAHORE: Cricket icon Majid Khan has demanded of the Patron of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) President Pervez Musharraf to remove Dr Nasim Ashraf for his financial irregularities in the Board and the manner in which he sacked former Test cricketer Saleem Altaf.

Addressing a crowded press conference at his Zaman Park residence here on Friday, Majid called upon the Patron to appoint such a person as chairman of the Board who knew and understood cricket and responded to a question that if he was asked to do the job he would accept the challenge.

“The present Board had turned this institution as an employment exchange. When I was the chief executive of the PCB we had 20 to 30 employees but today this number has increased to 700 plus,” Majid said.

He added that there was no discipline in the Board and personal likes and dislikes had made the players more powerful than the Board.

“Inzamam-ul-Haq refused to play the Oval Test match but wasn’t sacked from the captaincy. Younis Khan refused to lead the team saying ‘I don’t want to become a dummy captain’ and declined to play in the match against Bangladesh early this year but escaped punishment.

“The player who confessed before millions of people watching him throw a match was made captain of the team,” Majid recalled.

The former captain of Pakistan cricket team said that non-technocrats were damaging the game of cricket. “We cricketers are deeply concerned about the financial indiscipline in the PCB and demand that the misuse of public money should be audited by the Public Accounts Committee of the government of Pakistan,” demanded Majid.

Majid was highly critical of the treatment meted out to his former Test colleague Saleem Altaf and called upon Nasim Ashraf that if he had left a little bit of decency in him he should quit after the just decision of the Lahore High Court’s Judge Justice Ali Akbar Qureshi in restoring Saleem on his job.

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