PCB new chairman: Has Ramiz Raja resigned as Pakistan Cricket Board chairman?

Back-to-back home Test series losses versus Australia and England, coupled with the country’s political involvement in the board might well make it difficult for Ramiz Raja to continue as the PCB chairman, if reports are to be believed.

A close confidant of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan, Raja, is said to be losing the political support as well ever since the fall of Khan’s government in April this year.

There have been several reports in the past suggesting that a certain lobby of former members of the Pakistan Cricket Board had strongly campaigned for the ousting of Raja from the chairman post, after Shahbaz Sarif replaced Khan as the country’s prime minister, but to no avail back them.

For those unaware, Pakistan’s prime minister is also the patron-in-chief of the PCB, who nominates candidates for the board’s chairman post, after which one of them is elected to the same by the board of governors.

PCB new chairman

Ramiz Raja has been the PCB chairman since September 2021, when he was nominated by then PM, and his 1992 World Cup team skipper Imran Khan, to the post.

As per Geo News, Najam Sethi is most likely to replace Raja as the board’s chairman. Sethi was elected as the board’s chairman in the year 2017, for a three-year term. However, after Imran Khan’s sweeping majority during the 2018 general elections in the country, he had resigned mid-way from the post the same year due to his differences with Khan.

Also, as per the report, Pakistan PM Shahbaz also hosted Sethi on a Lunch today, which perhaps makes it more certain that even Raja might not be able to complete his three-year tenure as chairman.

The 60-year-old was the fourth Pakistan Test Cricketer after Ijaz Butt, Javed Burki and Abdul Hafeez Kardar, to be appointed as the PCB chairman last year.