Pakistan’s Punjab state interim Chief Minister Mohsin Naqvi on Tuesday was elected unopposed as the 37th chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) for a three-year term.
In a post on X, the cricket board said: “Mr Syed Mohsin Raza Naqvi has been elected unanimously and unopposed as the PCB’s 37th Chairman today.”
The PCB also shared a photo of Naqvi meeting chief selector Wahab Riaz and the board’s Chief Operating Officer Salman Naseer.
The announcement came after the PCB’s Board of Governors held a meeting at the National Cricket Academy in Lahore, according to a PCB press release.
Speaking to the board members following his election, Naqvi said: “I am deeply honoured and humbled to have been unanimously elected as the chairman of the PCB. I am thankful for the trust and confidence reposed in me.”
“I am fully committed to upgrading the standard of the game in the country and bringing professionalism in the administration of cricket in Pakistan,” he added.
The country’s cricket governing body had been without a chairman for the last 13 months with the PCB having been run by two separate interim management committees during that time.
Naqvi’s appointment filled the spot left vacant in the PCB’s Board of Governors by former chief Zaka Ashraf, who stepped down from the post on January 19.
The resignation had come three days after the Ministry of Inter-Provincial Coordination (IPC) had disallowed Ashraf from holding an IMC meeting wherein he was supposed to form the Board of Governors, which was the first step to hold the elections of PCB chairman for a three-year term.
On Jan 22, Naqvi’s name had emerged as the frontrunner to become the new PCB chairman Interim Management Committee. Sources said the media mogul had the backing of Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar — who is also the PCB’s patron-in-chief — to take up the role.
On January 27, the PCB had announced the composition of its Board of Governors in accordance with Paragraph 10 of the 2014 PCB constitution. Naqvi and Mustafa Ramday were included in the Board of Governors as the two nominees of the prime minister. The remaining eight members came equally from regional cricket associations and departments.
