By Syed Intikhab Ali
Karachi: An important meeting of PCB’s Domestic and Cricket committees will be held on Monday in Lahore to accommodate certain domestic teams back in the country’s First Class system, The www.scoreline.org has learnt.
Informed sources said cricket officials of the affected departmental teams, including ZTBL’s Masood Anwar, Port Qasim’s former Test captain Rashid Latif, Brighto Paints’s Muhammad Ali and State Bank’s Zaheer Hasan, had requested the Domestic Committee to reconsider the policy concerning First Class matches which severely affected the entire system and the cricketing fraternity.
They had argued that due to the prevailing system, some deserving teams and cricketers had been deprived of a chance to play on the country’s premier circuit.
The decision to this effect was causing low standard of the game at the First Class level, they said, urging the PCB committees to sort out the problem and provide maximum opportunities to deserving cricket teams and players to participate in the First-Class competition, the sources said.
It would be the first meeting involving the two PCB committees since the establishment of the Cricket Committee comprising former Test cricketers Mudassar Nazar, Iqbal Qasim, Nadeem Khan and Ms Urooj Fatima.
The sources further said that the Domestic Committee had been urged that, instead of eight regional and eight departmental teams, the PCB may allow 12 departmental teams in the Patron’s Trophy and 12 regional teams in the Pakistan Premier Tournament Quaid-e-Azam Trophy.
Besides, the Patron’s Trophy shall be held before Quaid-e-Azam Trophy Grade-I, in which the PCB allows five departmental cricket players to appear as guest players in regional teams to make the games more competitive.
The Domestic Committee, the sources said, has informed the individuals concerned that it would present the request to PCB Chairman Shahryar Khan and Chairman Executive Committee Najam Sethi who would take the final decision in this regard.
The proposed meeting was earlier to be held on Saturday, but due to the request of the departmental cricket heads, the schedule has been changed to reconsider the request.