PCB Official Confirms Pakistan's Chief Selector, Clarifies Meeting Between Board And Shoaib Akhtar

Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has ended all the speculations surrounding the national chief selector. Several reports in recent times suggested that PCB might ask Misbah-ul-Haq to step down as the chief selector and focus on just the head coach’s role.

The former Pakistan captain was given the dual role last year. The rumours started doing the rounds after Pakistan’s poor display on the tour of England where they managed to register just one win. The rumours were further fuelled when former pacer Shoaib Akhtar stated that PCB considered him for the post before the cricket board denied the same.

Interestingly, PCB chief Ehsan Mani and CEO Wasim Khan had recently met Akhtar for a private meeting. Well, PCB has decided to continue with Misbah as the chief selector for now. Pakistani news outlet The News quoted a PCB official as saying that there were no plans of any change in the selection committee.

“These are just rumours and nothing else. We have no plans of making any changes in the selection committee at this point of time. How could we do that? We have yet make evaluation key posts. We have already made it clear that all the key posts would go under thorough evaluation at the completion of a set period. That revive has yet to be conducted, so there is no reason to make any changes in the committee,” the PCB official said.

He termed the recent meeting of Shoaib with the PCB top brass as totally private.

“Shoaib had requested for meeting and he was obliged during Mani and Wasim’s stay in Islamabad. There was no other reason for that meeting except that the former Test cricketer wanted to meet the PCB top brass,” said the official.

The PCB official said that there was no other change on the cards except on one position that has fallen vacant due to Iqbal Qasim’s resignation.

“Iqbal Qasim has recently resigned from the post of cricket committee head and as such the PCB is currently looking for a suitable candidate on the post. At the moment we even did not finalise the name as a new head of the cricket committee,” he said.

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