Najam Sethi to replace Raja as PCB chairman

Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s Prime Minister and board patron, has officially initiated the effort to remove Ramiz Raja from his position as chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board. After days of speculation about the current board’s future, a new 14-member committee led by Najam Sethi and including former Pakistan cricketers Shahid Afridi and Sana Mir will now be presented to the Pakistan cabinet for approval.

Since Imran Khan was ousted as Prime Minister in April of this year, Raja had been in a weak position.

In September 2021, the 60-year-old Raja was chosen as the 36th chairman of the PCB Board of Governors (BoG). The captain of the team that won the World Cup in 1992 nominated Raja for the position. During Raja’s tenure, Pakistan participated in the Asia Cup final, made the semi finals and finals of successive T20 World Cups, and welcomed England and Australia to their shores, indicating the full return of international cricket to Pakistan.

Raja will be replaced by Sethi, who has held multiple positions as head of the PCB between 2003 and 2018, subject to legal approval. He also oversaw the creation of the Pakistan Super League in 2016 as its first chairman. The task of restoring the PCB constitution to its 2014 version will now fall on his committee for four months.

The reinstatement of departmental teams like WAPDA, PIA, and SNGPL in the country’s first-class circuit is one of the primary motivations for the constitutional revision. In the Imran Khan-approved rendition of the constitution in 2019, the PCB decided to get rid of the divisions that have generally been related with the game in the nation to smooth out the cricketing structure into six provincial sides – Northern, Sindh, Focal Punjab, Balochistan, Southern Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – reflecting that of Australia’s.

The PCB was criticized for their original move to abolish the historic structure in domestic cricket had its merits, despite the move’s merits, which saw several cricketers employed by these departments lose their jobs.

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In the meantime, Babar Azam’s situation as commander of the senior men’s group is probably not going to be impacted by the administration rebuilding right now, despite the fact that mumbles of a change have developed since the group’s 3-0 whitewash by Britain in the equitable closed Test series. Azam has been named to lead the team for the upcoming New Zealand series, and it is anticipated that he will continue into the new year. In Pakistani cricket, a change in the PCB administration is typically followed by the appointment of new team leaders.