ISLAMABAD: Najam Sethi, head of the interim management committee of the Pakistan Cricket Board, has effectively pulled himself out of the race to become the PCB’s next chairman, he said in a Twitter post on Tuesday.
Sethi has been heading the interim management committee since last December, whose tenure was due to end on June 21.
It was widely believed that Sethi would be appointed permanent chairman of the board but speculation has grown in recent weeks on the return of Zaka Ashraf, a former board chairman himself.
“I don’t want to be a bone of contention between Asif Zardari and Shehbaz Sharif,” Sethi tweeted, naming a former Pakistan president and prominent coalition partner in the government and the current prime minister of Pakistan, respectively.
“Such instability and uncertainty is not good for PCB. Under the circumstances I am not a candidate for Chairmanship of PCB. Good luck to all stakeholders.”
Sethi’s tweet was referencing “political horsetrading” over the chairman’s seat, ESPNcricinfo said, as Ashraf is believed to be Zardari’s pick.
Traditionally, the PM’s appointee to the PCB board of governors becomes the board chairman in Pakistan.
Sethi has been running the PCB on an interim basis since Ramiz Raja was removed as chairman and the board’s 2019 constitution was scrapped in December last year. Sethi’s committee was initially given 120 days to bring back the 2014 constitution under which the PCB was run and reinstate the regional and department structure in domestic cricket. The committee was also given a mandate to form a board of governors and elect a chairman.
