A two-judge bench of Islamabad High Court heard arguments of the PCB and the petitioners on a judgment passed by Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui before adjourning the case till the first week of December

Umar Farooq in Islamabad07-Nov-2013Chaos and the PCB

May 8 – Zaka Ashraf becomes the PCB’s first elected chairman

May 28 – The Islamabad High Court bars Ashraf from dispensing his duties, following questions over the legality of his appointment – PCB had appointed nine of the ten members with voting rights without prior announcement and excluded Punjab, the country’s largest province

June 13 – Ashraf’s suspension is upheld at a subsequent hearing and the PCB is ordered to name an interim chairman to represent them at the ICC annual conference in June

June 19 – Key decisions are in the lurch, including an MoU that needs to be signed for Pakistan to tour the West Indies for a limited-over series in July

June 23 – Najam Sethi is named PCB’s interim chairman

July 20 – Islamabad High Court overrules all major decisions taken by Sethi and orders the Election Commission of Pakistan to conduct fresh elections for the chairman post

October 15 – Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan, dissolves the governing board of the PCB and forms a five-member interim management committee, headed by Sethi, to take care of cricket

October 21 – Islamabad High Court sets November 2 as the deadline for Pakistan’s election commission to fill the vacant chairman post

October 28 – PCB appeals in Islamabad High Court against Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui’s judgement

November 4: High Court says Sethi commission can continue working, stays election process

A two-judge bench of Islamabad High Court heard arguments of the PCB and the petitioners on a judgment passed by Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui before adjourning the case till the first week of December. Till then, the bench said, the Najam Sethi-run Interim Management Committee in the PCB could continue to function.The PCB is appealing the judgment passed by Justice Siddiqui that called for fresh elections to elect the board chairman. That judgement was itself a formal and full version of the order delivered on May 28 that ordered the suspension of Zaka Ashraf as PCB chairman over what it called the “dubious” and “polluted” process to elect him.Today, the bench heard arguments by Ashraf’s lawyer Afnan Karim Kundi for close to two hours. “The learned judge had no authority to legislate on the PCB constitution,” Kundi said. “My client acted only to comply with the ICC direction. The [PCB] constitution was vetted by all the concerned departments of the government of Pakistan and he was elected according to the constitution.”The bench then asked the main petitioner, Ahmad Nadeem Sadal, to present his arguments. The judges asked Sadal – a former official of the Army Cricket Club in Rawalpindi – how he was an aggrieved party so as to file a petition and how his fundamental rights were affected by the PCB’s actions. Sadal’s lawyer argued that the petition was filed in the public interest.Sadal’s petition, and the court’s response, has effectively derailed the PCB by throwing its daily functioning into confusion. The lack of administrative leadership forced it to sign a short-term broadcasting deal, affecting its major source of income, and cricket is currently being run on an interim annual budget.