PCB announces ambitious 5-year strategic development plan.

LAHORE -- With no significant achievement during the last 20 months after being elected for a three-year term in 2018, the incumbent management of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) headed by Ehsan Mani announced on Monday an ambitious development plan for five years (2019-2023).

Titled 'Five-Year Plan to Inspire and Unify Our Nation', the document lays down strategic and corporate objectives, sets a course of action for the progress and enhancement of the national men's, women's and age-group teams and presents a pathway and structure for grassroots development.

Underpinning the objectives will be a tracking system that will ensure that progress is monitored on a monthly basis throughout the duration of the plan.

The plan contains set six targets, with no clarity where Pakistan's national team will stand in world rankings in the three formats of the game or how many new stadiums will be built during this period.

Interestingly, the plan was approved by the current Board of Governors, whose most members are representatives of now-defunct regional and departmental institutions, who were elected under the previous PCB constitution.

However in 2019 when the PCB introduced its new constitution, it ended the regional and department-based domestic structure, rendering thousands of players across the country jobless, mainly due to abolishing departmental cricket.

In the new domestic structure, the PCB introduced a formula of six provincial teams that replaced 16 regional and approximately 30 departmental teams that had been featuring in both first-class and Grade-II cricket.

The old domestic structure of the sport, it is to be recalled, enabled thousands of aspiring young cricketers across Pakistan to earn monthly salaries for decades.

Surprisingly however, the representatives of regions and departments are still working as members of BoG while their teams are no more part of the domestic cricket. Almost a year has passed but the new domestic structure - which will have a new BoG - has not been made functional. It is mainly because the new constitution requires the PCB to get six provincial and around 90 city cricket associations registered under the Company Act.

But no announcement from the PCB about the registration in this regard has been made as yet. This standstill and uncertain situation has resulted in no cricket at district, city or club level for the second year running.

Though due to Covid-19 pandemic that brought entire Pakistan and the...