Who will be the next PCB Chief

Lt-Gen. Tauqir Zia, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, has announced his resignation. Addressing the media in a packed PCB conference room, Zia, who was accompanied by Rameez Raja, the chief executive, said: "I had sent in my resignation to the President on November 23 and it was accepted yesterday. I will be completing my four-year tenure on December 14 and that will be my last day.

I remember, at the start of his career as Chairman PCB, he looked quite energetic and determined to bring grass-root level changes in the infrastructure of Pakistan Cricket. This is the case whenever generals take charge of a civil organization they are always over-confident to perform well for a post which is not related to their professions. Like all other Generals ruling each and every civil department, his approach was that ‘Let me teach a lesson to bloody civilians and tell them how to manage all that stuff’. God knows why these army men feel that they are superior creatures and fit for each and every job assigned to them.

Let us see how was his performance during his four year era? I am not in the favor of analyzing the performance by looking in the documents and saying that how many new projects they have started. To me the only criterion of measuring the performance of a PCB chief is that how his cricket team performed during his era.

During these four years, our cricket team remained in a phase of restructuring and reconstruction. During last four year, Pakistani cricket has experienced many captains and none of them was solid enough to retain his position for a longer time. Same is true for coach. We tried expensive foreign coaches as well as best Pakistani available coaches. Various news indicate that the politics among team members has also caused grouping and it resulted in dirty politics among them. Bad impact of all this situation can be seen by the performance of Pakistani team during this period.

During his era, The Pakistan cricket team’s historical debacle at Sharjah plunged the nation in a sea of depression. The team’s score of 59 and 53 in a test that ended in less than two days was the lowest total by any team in the last half a century, the latest being the Kiwis surrendering to the Aussies for 42 and 53 at Wellington in 1945-46. As a result of this shameful performance, Tauqir Zia had to present his resignation to President Musharraf. Musharraf didn’t accept his resignation.

Another failure of his era was the early exit of Pakistani Cricket team from the world cup. This ranked as the worst showing by a Pakistan team in the World Cup since the inaugural event was held in England in 1975. As a result of such bad performance, PCB made an inquiry committee and in my opinion, Inquiry Committee means a simple way to get rid of problem and telling the people that they need to stop shouting as something against the culprits is going to be done. I remember when in an interview former captain Imran Khan said:” Inquiry Committee means cancer treatment with a Disprin,” and in my opinion, he is not wrong.

May be his resignation was something to do with the recent crisis caused by a tussle between Geo and PTV over an issue of broadcasting rights. In this case as well, he was one of those few persons who were involved in mismanagement of the whole situation.

He proposed the vision 2005: a program to change the cricket infrastructure of Pakistan before 2005. The success of this proposed program is still in question. Let’s hope it brings some positive changes in Pakistan cricket.

In my opinion, Tauqir may be sincere to Pakistan cricket. But it is not the sincerity which is needed to run the affairs of an organization involved in politics like PCB. It is not the military training which is required to perform the duty. One needs a lot of political wisdom and guts to be a PCB chairman. The PCB chairman had neither the guts to take on the vested interests nor the understanding of cricket to realize that. Like all other generals, it was too hard for the ex-DGMO (Director General of Military Operations) of Pakistan Army to understand.

I remember when a paper commented on the bad performance of Pakistani cricket team in the world cup: "Military methods" might have performed "all sorts" of wonders for cricket which will have all sorts of amazing long-term effects, but the bottom line is that the 1999 finalists were barely a shadow of themselves". Doesn’t it give the military men an idea what civilians think about implementing military ideology in civilian matters?

As per the constitution, President is going to appoint a new PCB chief. There is a risk that Musharraf will again appoint a general as the new PCB chief. The need of the day is to make the president realize that he should avoid appointing another general as PCB Chief as this experiment has badly failed in the past and perhaps if repeated again, it will fail again in the future. Infact, military people have a strange attitude. They want to rule all by themselves and don’t tolerate interference from anyone. That’s why they fail to perform well in managing such organizations.

In the end, I will like to add that after the plight in Tauqir Zia's era, if Musharraf is still interested in appointing another general as PCB Chief, why not to appoint Imran Khan as Corps Commander Lahore? To me both cases are identical.