Ramiz Raja

Ramiz Raja was appointed by Imran Khan towards the end of 2021 after a three-year-long successful stint of Ehsan Mani had ended.

The Wasim-Mani era was a breath of fresh air in the ever-monotonic PCB. Under the guidance of Imran Khan, they brought forth a new domestic cricket system with six teams from each province, similar to the structure Cricket Australia has been following for years.

Ramiz was a believer in the same system and continued to back the change as it ensured quality cricket between the six teams implementing the principle that states; the fewer the seats, the higher the quality of players.

Moreover, Ramiz was particularly interested in improving the pitch conditions in Pakistan and was often found advocating for hybrid pitches in the country, stating that this is what the future is all about.

Additionally, Ramiz also introduced the concept of the Pakistan Junior League, a junior version of the PSL. It was a tournament that had received some mixed reviews from people all over, but essentially it would do heaps of good to the young kids who had heaps of talent but little to no experience of professional/broadcasted cricket.

However, since the leadership in PCB is directly proportional to the leadership of Pakistan, the departure of Imran Khan as Prime Minister meant that it was curtains for Ramiz Raja as Chairman of PCB after spending just a little over a year at the helm.

Like always a change in board leadership also meant that there were going to be changes in the coaching staff as a result of which Misbah and Waqar wasted no time resigning. Lurking around the eve of the T20 World Cup 2022, these decisions weren’t thought to be in the team’s best interest. 

However, Ramiz built together a coaching staff which was headed by Saqlain Mushtaq. Saqlain was accompanied by Matthew Hayden and Vernon Philander for the World Cup. The decision eventually proved to be a rather popular one as Pakistan managed to reach their first World Cup final in 13 years.

Najam Sethi

His successor was Najam Sethi. Sethi pulled his strings and decided to overthrow all the work that had been done since 2018 and activated the constitution of 2013-14 with immediate effect. Alongside this, the six-team provincial domestic system had been scrapped and replaced by the old departmental cricket structure.

The only apparent plus-side of this was that many cricketers got the chance to earn their bread and butter again as the departments re-employed them to fill their teams.

However, critics argued that for how long will the PCB hold itself responsible for feeding all professional cricketers and not prioritize quality domestic cricket to move forward and become a world-beater once again?

Moreover, the trend of changing the management with a new administration at the helm continued as Najam Sethi brought (apparently forced) Mickey Arthur to come back leading to Saqlain Mushtaq’s resignation. 

The funny thing about this was that Mickey was hesitant to come because of job insecurity (proved correct eventually), therefore to accommodate him, Sethi created a new post of Team Director. An additional comical flavor to this was that Arthur would do this gig on a second priority with his main focus lasered on Derbyshire CCC. One could question where the sanctity of the PCB went missing during this decision-making.

Zaka Ashraf

Since the government was not of any independent party but a coalition one, Sethi’s stint was also cut short as this time PPP brought in Zaka Ashraf taking over as Chairman of the Management Committee.

While there may be many disagreements between Ashraf and Sethi, the two seemed to be on the same page when it came to the domestic structure of Pakistan cricket. However, there was a lot of turbulence to come for Pakistan after Zaka assumed leadership in July 2023 which unfortunately also happened to be three months before yet another World Cup.

After Pakistan failed to reach the semis of the 2023 World Cup under Babar Azam and Mickey Arthur, he consulted a lot of cricketers and was focused on bringing the 21st century former cricketers into the decision-making roles. Therefore, he appointed several ex-cricketers in prominent roles with the most notable of them being Mohammad Hafeez and Wahab Riaz as Team Director and Chief Selector respectively.

However, Zaka’s tenure that lasted up until January 2024 courtesy of yet another change in the political dynamic was full of controversies. For starters, as a Chairman of the Managing Committee, Zaka did not have any long-term decision-making powers. Despite that he continued to make decisions that were bound to have long-term effects on the team. 

Critics argue that stunts pulled by the board during the World Cup such as leaking of private convos between the management and the captain along with issuing press releases during the middle of the tournament to dissociate with the cricket team, its captain, and chief selector (Inzamam) were extremely harmful to the mental health and the intra-dynamic of the players.

They further add that the board should’ve been more considerate of the pressure that the players were under during a World Cup that was being hosted by their arch-rivals and ever-tensed-up neighbors, India.

Besides revamping the management of the PCB and pushing Arthur and Co. aside, Zaka then proceeded to make sure that new captains were appointed by making Babar Azam resign.
New appointments included Shaheen Shah Afridi as a T20I captain while the more shocking appointment for the masses was that of Shan Masood as Pakistan’s Test captain.

I feel that we had someone else on the team who ticked all the boxes and deserved the nod, but like they say everything happens for a reason. Rizwan not becoming the captain right now in a turbulent Pakistan Cricket Team, is a blessing in disguise for him. The way I see it, he’s on track to become Pakistan’s all-format captain towards the latter half of 2025, and that’s exactly when I see this bunch of players rallying together again under one leader like they used to do under Babar.

Until then, with the split captaincy and one format’s responsibility still up for grabs coupled with the ever-inconsistent politics of Pakistan and thus PCB, I feel Pakistan’s cricketing fraternity has got a rollercoaster ride ahead of them till at least the end of the Champions Trophy and the WTC 2023-25

As far as the musical chairs of the Chairmen are concerned, PCB’s stakeholders appear to exist on Sunday which Harsha Bhogle famously described as the day they decide who’s going to be running things next week.

According to various media reports, Chief Minister of Punjab Mohsin Naqvi is likely to take over as Chairman of PCB’s Management Committee. The game of musical chairs continues.