The PCB has admitted it could’ve handled better the circumstances around the appointment of Mohsin Khan as the head of their new cricket committee. What should’ve been an early win in Ehsan Mani’s new tenure as board chairman turned instead into a distraction about the Qayyum report on match-fixing.
Comments by Mani and then Mohsin on the day of the announcement suggested that the board had disowned the report in a bid to ensure that Mohsin would work with Wasim Akram, also inducted to the committee; the former has repeatedly insisted he won’t work with players tainted by corruption, as he considered the latter to be.
That, the PCB has now clarified, was very much not the intention. “Certainly there was no intention of rubbishing the report in any shape or form,” Mani told ESPNcricinfo. “The Qayyum report is still a PCB document. I was involved in presenting it to the ICC.”
Mani and his chief operating officer Subhan Ahmed held an extensive meeting with Mohsin to convince him to work with Akram, after which Mohsin said he was 99% convinced that the charges on players were not “authentic”.
“There is certainly some baggage and we could’ve handled that better,” Mani said.
Mani was eager to point out that the Qayyum Report had not brought sanctions against Akram that prevented him from working for the board in the future. The report fined Akram and recommended that he be removed from the Pakistan captaincy. And though it conceded that it did not have the evidence to find him outright guilty of some allegations, it also recognised that was the case because of a u-turn by Ata-ur-Rehman, a prime witness against Akram (and also banned for life by Justice Qayyum).
“The fact is the Qayyum report said he shouldn’t be captain,” Mani said. “The PCB removed him, he got fined. But there was no sanction from working in future for the board.”
That, and subsequent comments by Mohsin, has meant that a strong, diverse committee with the potential for meaningful work has been overshadowed. Alongside Akram, the committee includes former captains Misbah-ul-Haq and Urooj Mumtaz. Misbah is seen as someone who can give relevant inputs into the state of domestic cricket, in which he still participates and is a believer. Mumtaz’s appointment is an indication that the administration is going to take more seriously the development of the women’s game.
Mani is eager for all involved – Akram and Mohsin, as well as Mickey Arthur and Sarfraz Ahmed about whom Mohsin has made controversial comments – to put these issues behind them and move on.