The out of the blue appointment of Najam Sethi as the ad hoc PCB chairman, coming hot on the heels of his stint as the acting caretaker chief minister overseeing national elections in the Punjab, took nearly everyone by surprise. Being an absolute stranger, almost an alien, to cricket, its mystique and its administration, this looked like another example of a square peg in a round hole – a peculiar geometric problem which we have become accustomed to in all spheres of national life.
Though Sethi’s appointment was made by the prime minister, it were the courts, to be precise the Islamabad High Court, that had removed his predecessor on the grounds that his election was not bona fide, and ordering the government to bring in an acting chairman. That gave Mian Nawaz Sharif an opportunity to install Sethi, who had only a few days before vacated the Punjab chief minister’s house after the PML-N’s thumping triumph in the province that landed it the federal government as well after a 14-year interregnum, in the PCB chairman’s office.
There are many who without the slightest euphemism conjectured that this perhaps was a quid pro quo for ‘services rendered’ during the critical election time, while there were still others who thought that the suave Sethi had become particularly adept at winkling out plum postings – even if on a temporary basis.
Be that as it may, the IHC’s mandate for the acting chairman was to get his successor elected. But as it transpired, after the initial hesitancy, Sethi started throwing heavy hints that he would like to have the job for keeps – which means for a full term of four years, according to the new constitution, and of course, after an election process. The fly in the ointment for him though is that in order to put his hat in the ring, the new constitution ordains that he has to represent one of the cricket regions. Would he be up to the rigmarole? Apparently, he is committed to the cause, for he had by the time he expressed his intent been exceptionally well briefed on the lay of the land.
Meanwhile, Sethi has been to the International Cricket Council’s executive board meeting in London, where he acquainted himself with everybody who is anybody in world cricket. He must have made an impression of sorts, at least for his clarity of thought, equipoise and eloquence – a sea change after five years of a bungling Ijaz Butt and only marginally better Ch. Zaka Ashraf.
Though it was his first foray in the global cricket fraternity, Sethi surely did spread his charm around to good effect, for he succeeded in coaxing the ICC to promptly form a committee to at least look into reducing banned Mohammad Aamir’s five-year sentence to the extent of allowing the young fast bowler to get his fitness and rhythm to world standards by the time he is allowed to return to the fold. Knowing how stringent the ICC is in such cases, that is some concession.
But once back home, the very court that opened the door of the Chairman’s office for Sethi, nullified every appointment that he had made. By this process it nipped in the bud the wholesale sackings that were in the offing – to clear the deadwood, and other urgent reforms.
Sethi’s mandate, the IHC reminded sternly, was simply to supervise the election of the new chairman. At the time of writing, with the last week of July to go, Sethi along with a bunch of PCB’s hot shot legal eagles was apparently making a bid to convince the court to enhance the acting chairman’s scope of setting the cricketing menagerie in order as well.
Despite the merits and demerits of Sethi’s appointment, the insider info on him is that he is being well-liked by the PCB’s rank and file. That is no wonder indeed, for after the brash and insolent Butt and a feudalistic and bullying Zaka Ashraf, Sethi’s natural easygoing ways would have won him many an admirer for his affability. One senior Board official, who is not particularly enamoured of his previous head honchos, remarked: “Unlike his predecessors, he is very quick on the uptake”.
But then that is something that we already knew about Sethi.
The big question is not how and why Sethi became the acting chairman. The really significant question is: whether he is just warming the chair for his successor or preparing to install himself for the full stretch? Will he succeed in selling his election to the same court that had sent Zaka Ashraf packing for similar reasons? And, if he does, when he becomes the monarch of all he surveys, will he quite turn out to be the panacea that the game is looking for in these difficult times – when to quote Sethi , ‘Pakistan cricket is at its lowest ebb’? In fact, even this latter seems to be an understatement, considering the glum circumstances both on and off the field.
Too many NS’s : Can NS’s choice, NS, turn Pakistan Cricket around?
The popular refrain in the PCB these days is that whatever Najam Sethi wants, Najam Sethi gets. Not quite. Though he shares his initials with the other NS, the cricket loving current prime minister of Pakistan, he failed to land his coveted posting as our man in Washington.
‘Pakistan Cricket’, says Najam Sethi in his new found role as cricket guru, ‘is at its lowest ebb’. Yet it does not deter him from aspiring for the top job in the PCB.
But is Pakistan Cricket indeed at its ‘lowest ebb’? In certain respects, yes, it definitely is. But in many others, its condition is not so precarious as is generally made out to be.
No international team worth its name has visited this country for four years and a quarter. The hail of bullets and rockets rained on the Sri Lankan team in early March 2009 ensured that all cricket tours ceased forthwith and all our entreaties since have fallen on deaf ears. Pakistan remains a pariah and an outcast as a cricket destination, even worse than the place Ian Botham once upon a time considered the ideal tourist spot for his mother-in-law – with a one-way ticket.
Any other frontline cricketing nation would surely have shown a sharp decline in its skills, standards and competitiveness in the international arena under such adverse circumstances. But, despite being turned into virtual nomads, and playing its ‘home’ series abroad (mostly in the UAE), the Team Pakistan on its day can still hold its own against the best in the business, though in its two recent outings – in an away rubber against South Africa and in the ICC Champions Trophy 2013 – it was handed a real pasting.
But in the year before, it won nearly eighty per cent of its encounters in all the three formats – which is some consistency from a side tagged as perhaps the most unpredictable, barring the minnows. Some promising new talent has also emerged in these distressing times, which is remarkable for a cricketing wilderness where no foreign team ventures, despite cajoling, coaxing and blandishments.
And since this vein of talent in Pakistan runs deep, building an outfit that could give even the topflight competitors a run for their money in the 2015 World Cup should not be too daunting a task for the cricket administrators.
But since 1996 the stadiums in the country have not received the kind of funding that could make them comparable with those in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Even our formerly most used leading stadiums with the exception of Gaddafi Stadium have fallen into a state of disrepair and decay. That is an area that would require investing in so that when international cricket finally returns to Pakistan, we would have the kind of stadiums that are taken for granted elsewhere in the world.
Is Najam Sethi up to all this?
With no cricketing background, he is at much of a disadvantage as his immediate predecessor, Ch. Zaka Ashraf. NS does not have the depth of understanding of the complexity of the cricketing issues, culture and personalities involve – either at the local grassroots, or at the international level.
Modern cricket management is now a vast undertaking and an exceptionally intricate affair, and the game has grown beyond recognition in the last seven to eight years to the extent that the post-IPL era has the same impact as the post-Packer revolution.
On the international level alone, dealing with the ICC and other boards, particularly the vexatious Indian Board, demands a lot of dexterity, which combined with a lack of rapport and knowledge is going to be an extremely difficult proposition.
That said, Najam Sethi with his considerable media savvy developed over a lifetime as a journalist, his social facility, his easy and yet persuasive manner, and his friendships with important personalities across the eastern border has big pluses in achieving what the cricket-starved national fans desire most of all: the first visit of a foreign team to Pakistan post 2009. To translate this dream into a reality there is no man of his stature in the picture. Sharp and skillful analyst of any given situation that he is, and proud sole possessor of an ‘all-knowing’ chiria to boot, it would not be surprising if he manages to pull off the impossible and sets Pakistan on the right track.
The writer is a journalist based in Islamabad.
