‘Money charged for clubs’ registration, elections to be returned’

LAHORE: Director National High Performance Centre Nadeem Khan on Friday announced that the entire amount which the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) will receive for clubs’ registration and from the candidates interested in contesting the elections of club and city associations will be returned to their respective club and city associations as soon as the new bodies were formed.

Speaking at a hurriedly-called press conference, Nadeem said as no city or club bodies had been functional for the last two years, the PCB would get the entire amount to be transferred to the city associations after the completion of their elections.

He said the PCB would not take any money from clubs, adding it was not correct to say that the Board would earn tens of million of rupees from them.

“All the past and present cricketers are the products of clubs and the PCB plans to further promote cricket at the nursery level,” Nadeem insisted.

He, however, admitted that the registration fees of the clubs had been raised from Rs2,500 to Rs5,000 and annual subscriptions fee of Rs1,500 to Rs5,000 for the affiliate clubs and Rs7,500 is fixed for the associate and Rs20,000 for the full members club. Nadeem said the increase had been made after six years which he said was not a big amount.

All clubs irrespective of their category would have one vote, the official added.

To a question, Nadeem said the decision that all the amount collected through the registration of clubs and their elections would go back to the respective city associations could not be announced and due to this the ambiguity emerged that the PCB would get richer by tens of millions of rupees through club cricket fees.

It may be mentioned here that due to this uncertainty, former Test cricketer and selector Shafqat Rana has decided to close down his club in Lahore as he did not want to put further financial burden either on his club cricketers or on himself.

For the first time, Nadeem said, the PCB formed three categories of the club namely Full, Associate and Affiliate members. He said it would be optional for a club to join any category after completing the terms. He claimed that as he had himself been running clubs and academy he knew it was not a big financial burden on the club. However, he admitted there was a dearth of cricket grounds in the country, particularly in Lahore.

To a question about the status of the LCCA ground, Nadeem said the PCB did nothing to get its control because it was an action of the Lahore City government to take it back as no elected body was controlling it.