New PCB chairman to be elected on June 27

The election for the next PCB chairman will be held on June 27, with Zaka Ashraf expected to make a comeback as head of cricket in the country.

In a press release, Ahmed Shehzad Farooq Rana, the PCB election commissioner and acting chairman, said: "The election of the PCB Chair will be held in a fair and transparent manner whilst adopting due process and ensuring completion of all legal formalities… on Tuesday, 27 June, at the PCB headquarters in Lahore. The election schedule will be issued after receiving nominations from the departments/service organisations."

The PCB's board will comprise ten members: four regional representatives, four representatives of services organisations and the two members nominated by the patron/prime minister. All board members, including the chairman, will be appointed for three years.

Earlier this week, Ashraf, along with Supreme Court lawyer Mustafa Ramday, joined the board after being nominated by the prime minister. In Pakistan, a prime minister appointee usually goes on to become the board chairman.

This follows Najam Sethi, who was heading the interim management committee that ran the PCB till June 20, withdrawing from the race to become the chairman. The Sethi-led management committee was given the mandate to revive the 2014 PCB constitution and form the board of governors after Ramiz Raja was removed as chairman and the 2019 constitution was scrapped.

However, Sethi's list of nominees for the board stirred a legal complication as four regions - Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Rawalpindi - were named out of the rotation.

In the press release, Rana rejected Sethi's nominations and replaced them with representatives of Larkana, Dera Murad Jamali, Bahawalpur and Hyderabad. The four departments included are National Bank of Pakistan, State Bank of Pakistan, Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Limited and Sui Southern Gas Company.

It was Sethi who had ended Ashraf's first stint as PCB chairman in 2014. At that time, the pair was involved in a legal battle for the chairmanship, with the position switching hands several times. Eventually, then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif settled the issue by ousting Ashraf and bringing in Sethi.