ICC Task Force to visit Pakistan

Giles Clarke, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, is prepared to visit Pakistan to make a personal plea to the country’s president Asif Ali Zardari to reduce political involvement in the game.

Clarke chaired an ICC Pakistan task team that recommended freedom from political interference as a vital step towards the successful management of the game in Pakistan, and he is prepared to present his case directly to Zardari after meeting fierce resistance to the proposals.

The ICC has since adopted the need for political independence worldwide, giving countries such as Pakistan two years to adjust their constitution — a decision that Pakistan did not object to at the annual meeting in Hong Kong last month. But the Pakistan Cricket Board has thrown the proposed changes into doubt, arguing that “the circumstances in Pakistan are unique” and that the system “cannot certainly be labelled as faulty”.

A visit by the ICC’s Pakistan Task Team (PTT) to Pakistan is on the cards, though details of the scope and nature of the trip as well as the timing are yet to be finalised. The development comes after the PTT’s report on Pakistan cricket was criticised by the PCB on two counts, among others: the timing of its submission, and the observation that other than the visit of an individual member, the task team had not actually set foot in the country before putting together the report.

That criticism has especially stung the ICC though officials insist that the trip is not a direct consequence of that and had been on the cards for some time. It is unclear yet, however, who will visit and when; the Guardian reports that Giles Clarke, the ECB chairman and head of the PTT, might do so. Haroon Lorgat, the ICC’s chief executive, will almost certainly be part of any such delegation and has been a regular visitor to Pakistan; his last trip was just before the World Twenty20 in 2010.

The development has emerged at a time of growing divergence between the PCB and ICC over the 38-page report, which made 63 recommendations for what, in effect, amounts to a re-haul of the game and its governance in Pakistan. That the Pakistan board was not particularly taken in by the report was evident in their long and detailed public response - their own observations - made earlier this week. The board said the report was a “scholarly exercise” and took a dig at the fact that nobody other than Dave Richardson, the ICC’s general manager and a PTT member, had even come to Pakistan. It also said the report contained factual errors and that a number of recommendations were “superfluous or redundant.”