PCB CEO Wasim Khan recalls gatecrashing Pakistan match to watch Imran Khan play

BIRMINGHAM: Once I climbed the fence of Edgbaston cricket stadium to watch my favourite cricketers Imran Khan and Mohsin Khan in action because I didn’t have the ticket for that match, revealed the Chief Executive of Pakistan Cricket Board in an exclusive interview with Geo News at his home town Birmingham before flying back to Pakistan.

Wasim who’s parents migrated to the UK from Bhimber area of Azad Kashmir, was born in Birmingham in 1971, the same year when his all-time favourite cricketer and now the prime minister of Pakistan Imran Khan made his cricket debut in the very city at Edgbaston. 

Sharing his memories of that incident, which happened during the 1982 Edgbaston Test match, Wasim said, “Kids do that sort of things and I was no exception either. I was a 12 years old from inner city Birmingham so me and couple of other friends climbed the fence and went inside the stadium to watch that match and support Pakistan."

Wasim was the first British-born Pakistani or Muslim to play county cricket when he made his debut for Warwickshire CCC in 1995. But his career was short, he played just 58 first class games scoring at an average of 30 with 5 hundreds and 19 scores of 50 or more.

He agrees that as a player he had an average career but still he’s proud of his achievements as a player.

“I played for England under 19 and was part of the 1995 Warwickshire squad who won the championship double , sharing dressing room with players like Donald and Pollock and no body can take those achievements away from me”, said Wasim

In 1995 when he started playing for Warwickshire players like Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Courtney Walsh, Curtly Ambrose, Mushtaq Ahmed, Shaun Pollock and Javagal Srinath were also playing in the county circuit.

“I used to open with Nick Knight and averaged 49 in that season with a highest score of 181 not out in my first season”, added Wasim.

Wasim said that in his playing days, the South African pacer Allan Donald was his favourite player, with whom he not only shared the dressing room but also used to chat and practice a lot with him.

Wasim wasn’t able to make it to England’s first 11 but he once stood as a substitute fielder for Pakistan during their tour of Australia in 1996-97. Remembering that incident Wasim told that he was playing in Wellington, New Zealand and had a real of three weeks from cricket so he went to Sydney, Australia. Pakistan was playing against Australia at SCG and was having some injury issues with several players so Mushtaq Mohammed requested him to stand as substitute for Mohammad Zahid.

“Some people don’t agree to that but I always say to them go and ask Mushtaq Mohammad if you don’t trust me. I stood in place of Zahid for 9 overs or so”, Wasim added.

He said that passion for cricket and Pakistan runs in his blood but it is sad to see that despite welcoming people who come from Pakistan with open arms in the UK the British Pakistanis don’t get the same treatment , there’s some prejudice against them.

“When Micky Arthur was in Pakistan everyone was respecting him but when a British Pakistani went to serve in Pakistan the attitude towards him was slightly different. In my opinion a change of mindset is required to see what skill set the person has not where did he come from”.

“I’m a British Pakistani and that is a fact that can’t be changed. Every country has its on cricketing system , in many other countries outsiders are working there like the CEO of West Indies cricket and CEO of Australian cricket are from other countries. All the time I say to do a comparative study that what was happening 2-3 years ago in Pakistan cricket and what we are doing now”, Wasim added further.

He told Geo that he watched the whole cricket world up in 1992 at a friend’s house and was there at Lords when Pakistan won the T20 World Cup in 2009 to support Pakistan and also at the Oval when Pakistan won Champions trophy in 2017.

Before joining the PCB, Wasim has a successful career as an administrator. He became the director of Cricket Foundation in 2005 and later became its CEO in 2009. At that time Wasim was regarded as one of the most influential person in English cricket after he developed a £50 million per year program “Chance to Shine” to promote cricket in the state schools at the grassroot level. For his services to cricket, he was awarded MBE by the Queen in 2013.

Wasim told Geo that he’s working to develop a similar program to promote school cricket in Pakistan. There were some system setup for school cricket in cities like Karachi but in other cities it was running at adhoc basis but no organized structure of school cricket is currently working in Pakistan.

“We have setup six cricket associations and under the clubs there will be school cricket and a frame work will also be setup to deliver school cricket. Hopefully it will be setup with in 2-3 years”, Wasim added further.

Wasim also served as the CEO of Leicestershire county cricket club from 2014-18, he was the first Muslim to run affairs of any majors sports club in the UK.

Responding to a question about differences between running a county club and cricket board of a country of 22 million people, Wasim said that the difference is huge.

“I’m an administrator, the job is same but at a much bigger scale. My job is not to select teams but to make the Pakistan cricket board financially viable, develop systems and develop stronger structures for long term sustainability”, said Wasim.

Talking about Pakistan cricket team’s performance against England in the recently concluded series Wasim said he was a bit disappointed with the results.

“Before the series against England we won six out of eight series. The team was showing some progress but the results of the ODI’s against England are totally unacceptable.”

Wasim told Geo that after winning the first T20 he had hopes of winning the series but that wasn’t the case.

Answering a question about team selection, Wasim said it’s not his job to select the team, it’s the job of selectors. The chief selectors and the selectors have full autonomy with inputs form head coach and the captain in team selection. The names are then sent to me and Chairman Ehsan Mani for the approval. PCB does feel the pressure when the team loses as expectations of the fans are high.

“A loss is acceptable to fans as long as the team shows performance, competitiveness and fighting spirits. But not then when the fielding standards are low or players are not working hard enough”, said Wasim.

Wasim told that team’s performance is assessed after every series, the cricket committee will meet at the end of August to assess the performances in the series against England and West Indies.

He’s said that criticizing some players that they are in the team without playing any first class cricket is not fair as T20 is a different format from first class cricket. In modern cricket, there are white-ball specialists for examplary players like Alex Hales who has only had white ball contract with Nottinghamshire and Ravi Bopara has the same for Sussex. Some players like Babar Azam, Hassan Ali and Shaheen Afridi late performers in all formats.

“In countries like England for example some cricketers have only contacts for T20 format, and it’s same in Australian state cricket and South Africa as well. This is a norm now as different players have specialisations in different formats some excel in white ball cricket others do well in red ball”.

“Cricket now is different from what it was 20-30 years before where every player has to play all the various formats of cricket and then they will get a chance to play white ball cricket”, he added.

About reducing the first class cricket in Pakistan down to six teams Wasim said that this is according to the vision of PM Imran Khan who’s also patron of PCB. He wished to have a first class system like Australia and our job is to implement his vision.

“We’ve worked a lot on that , setup interim committees , the first class system is also running based on six teams who also have 2nd elevens too. And under that we have developed a programs based on 19 cities that is up and running too. The club cricket will start in September which has around 4,000 clubs”.

He said that people should have patience to see the result of these measures, we just can’t have success overnight and hopefully Pakistan will have success in long term. The players say the quality of cricket now in first class is quite high now as they only play 10 first class matches and there’s always pressure on them to perform.

Wasim told that a five-year strategy has also been devised to restructure the high performance system. Past heroes like Mohammad Yusuf, Saqlain Mushtaq and others are brought back into the system because they add a lot to the value.

“Our job is to strengthen the first class cricket in Pakistan. When I joined the PCB Pakistan was placed at number 6 and 7 in ODIs and test cricket and people said our domestic system is running fine so I asked them why we are at number 6 and 7”.

He said he feels sorry for the players who lost their jobs due to restructuring of first class cricket but PCB is not a job offering bureau.

“First class system is a product to produce players for the international cricket, the players were coming from the existing system but there was no consistency in test cricket and international cricket in terms of those players performing over long period of time we are trying to achieve that consistency”, he added.

Wasim said that since he’s taken over charge, he has worked hard and used his relations with other cricket boards to convince them to tour Pakistan. Before, the visiting teams were paid to play cricket in Pakistan and that too for only white-ball cricket like West Indies and World 11.

“For the last two and half years we have made it clear that neither we will pay any team to tour Pakistan nor we will play bilateral cricket in the UAE”.

Wasim who’s has very cordial relations with cricket boards in England, Australia and New Zealand said that he has used that leverage but also boosted their confidence in our system.

“We worked a lot with the government on security measures which I also presented to the MCC world committee which comprises over players like Shane Warn, Brendon McCullum and many other. We worked hard to convince them and resultantly the MCC team toured Pakistan last year for the first time in past 50 years”.

But his ultimate aim is to revive Test cricket in Pakistan as for more than a decade Pakistan has played almost all of its bilateral Test cricket in the UAE. He considers that brining the Test cricket back in Pakistan is not only a big moment for the cricket fans and the whole nation but will also be his biggest achievement.

“Gradually, we took small steps so earlier this year South African team toured Pakistan and now News Zealand and England are scheduled to visit Pakistan later this year and we will be hosting Australia and West Indies too”, said Wasim Khan.

About the Australian team’s visit to Pakistan scheduled to take place next year he’s said there was a chance of it clashing with the PSL 7 but we knew we will not get another chance to host the Aussies as the future tour program of Australia is fully packed.

“Australians will be touring Pakistan after 22. we have windows of January and May for the PSL but in May it will clash with the IPL so we will have to reschedule the upcoming 7 edition of the PSL”, he added.

Since than it’s been announced by the PCB that the 7th edition of the PSL will be held in January 2022.

Geo asked Wasim Khan, who’s of Kashmiri origin that why is that in England's last T20 against Pakistan, three British-born Pakistani cricketers were part of the English squad, but never a Kashmiri-origin player has played for Pakistan?

Relying to that Wasim agrees that cricketers from AJK were not provided opportunities to play first class and international cricket for Pakistan but that’s going to change in the future.

“In the new first class system we have setup “Northern” team specially to involve players from Kashmir too, so I hope Kashmiri cricketers will get more opportunities in coming days."

He said that the major goal of upcoming Kashmir Premiere league is to give opportunities to local players.

“Through KPL local players from Kashmir will get exposure and a chance to perform , on their performance basis they will be able to avail chances in PSL and in the first class too”, Wasim added.

He said that PCB has applied to host six ICC cricket tournaments, two of them are champions trophy tournaments, two 50 over world cups and two T20 world cups in partnership with some other countries of the region.

“Champions trophy events are normally played on three venues, which we can and want to deliver on our own. T20 world cups are normally staged on 8 venues so we will be doing a joint venture with the UAE and for the 50 over world cups 10 venues are used and for that we are doing a partnership with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka”.

He said he’s hopeful that very soon Pakistan will host one of the abovementioned tournaments.

Wasim’s current contract with the PCB is due to expire in January. There are rumours that he had already signed to extend the contract but he termed those rumours as incorrect.

Wasim said, “I had informal conversation with the chairman but no offer was made formally and officially so far from the PCB. I’m still waiting as there still 6 months or so left so not in rush”.

He said that he has served Pakistan cricket with passion from the first day. If he gets a chance again he will serve with even more passion and pride.

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