Player power stamped out, says PCB chief

Ijaz Butt

KARACHI,  (Reuters) – Player power in Pakistan  cricket had damaged team spirit but board (PCB) chairman Ijaz  Butt said he has succeeded in crushing it.

Ijaz Butt

“Let me assure you that players’ power, though  present in the past, does not exist in the national team at the  moment as I have taken severe actions to eradicate it,” Butt  said in an interview with Dawn daily newspaper.

“To crush player power I penalised even prominent players  like Younis Khan, Shahid Afridi, Shoaib Malik and Kamran Akmal   without showing any reluctance, which in the past had damaged  the team spirit.”

Blooding new players had helped reduce the influence of  senior figures in the team, he added. Pakistan cricket has been troubled by indiscipline and  marred by controversies over the last two years, and its image  took a beating when Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir  were banned for at least five years on charges of spot-fixing on  the tour of England last year.

In June last year the PCB handed out bans or fines to six  prominent players on the tour of Australia.

Butt said the PCB was now in a much better financial  position than when he took over as chairman in late 2008.

“When I took over we had just 1.6 billion rupees ($18.8  million) in the reserve and owed around 1 billion to different  parties.”

The PCB now had reserves of around 3.2 billion rupees even  though it had not hosted a foreign team since mid 2009, he  added.

If India resumed bilateral cricket ties with Pakistan the  financial health of the PCB would improve further he said,  adding that there was a strong possibility they might play a  split series this year including limited over games at neutral  venues and tests in Pakistan.