LAHORE: In a bizarre development, after Ahmad Shahzad Farooq Rana, the acting chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, on Tuesday said that Zaka Ashraf will attend the ICC annual meeting being held in South Africa from July 9-16, the announcement was withdrawn by the PCB only a few minutes later.

It is learnt that PCB’s acting chairman did not take the consent of Zaka before issuing the press release.

Later, Zaka contacted the PCB and asked if anyone got his nod before making the announcement after which the PCB withdrew the press release.

Sources close to Zaka told Dawn that he was not happy over the development as he was unaware of the decision and only came to know about it through electronic media.

It is also learnt that being PCB’s chief election commissioner, Shahzad may not be allowed to sit in the ICC meeting, because he is not an elected, rather an employee of the PCB.

A PCB spokesman said that the press release was withdrawn to reconsider the decision on attending the ICC meeting, and added that the next announcement in this regard would be made in due course.

Former PCB chairman Zaka is one of the two nominees of Prime Minister and PCB patron Shehbaz Sharif in the Board of Governors of the PCB, and is a strong contender to win the PCB election at the BoG meeting.

The election, which was scheduled to be held on June 27, did not come about after legal cases against the election were filed in different courts against the changes made by the acting PCB chairman in the list of BoG members. The changes included cancellation of the list of the Interim Management Committee, which has the mandate to form the members’ list.

Though a number of cases had been dismissed by some courts, still few other cases were pending.

Amid all this, the acting PCB chairman, perhaps for the time being, decided to name Zaka to attend the important ICC meetings in South Africa where the new financial model of the ICC has to be approved.

The PCB has already protested before the ICC on its share in the model when Najam Sethi headed the PCB Interim Management Committee.

Published in Dawn, July 5th, 2023