The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) seems to have pressed the panic button given Monday’s announcement of thrusting Moin Khan into holding two key posts simultaneously. The former national captain, who has been in the limelight since last July in different roles with the Pakistan team, will now not only act as the chief selector but also double up as the team manager.

Previously he was named as the successor to Iqbal Qasim as chairman of the national selection committee during Najam Sethi’s first term before a court order forced the PCB to entrust Moin with the role of team manager — a task the former wicket-keeper/batsman handled admirably on the tour to Zimbabwe and the offshore ‘home series’ against South Africa and Sri Lanka in the United Arab Emirates.

And then when Dav Whatmore’s two-year reign as Pakistan coach ended in February, Moin emerged as the head coach for the Asia Cup and the ICC World Twenty20 with both competitions taking place in Bangladesh.

Moin’s appointment(s) is a clear sign that Sethi is unwilling to trust anyone else to carry the responsibilities of two vital positions which demand totally different mindset. This experiment of having one man do the job of two people could have far-reaching repercussions, something a non-technical individual like Sethi would never grasp.

Sethi may be a reputed journalist but he is no cricket expert. He may be a good administrator for the PCB but it doesn’t mean that he knows the intricacies of the game itself. The decision he has taken in Moin’s case is something never heard of before in either Pakistan cricket or that in any other country. Has anyone heard of one man calling the shots on tours as Moin would now do?

For instance, one is at a loss to understand that when the chief selector himself will be touring with the national team as manager, who would be looking after the process of going through domestic cricket matches for spotting new talent or watching back-up players. It also falls in the chief selector’s ambit to finalise selection of other outfits such as the Under-17, Under-19, the ‘A’ teams, etc but all this will be grossly neglected when Moin will be with the team on away tours which makes little sense really.

Moreover, it was learnt that Sethi would himself interview the candidates applying for the various coaching positions as mentioned by outspoken former pacer Sarfraz Nawaz in an interview published in this paper on Monday. Sarfraz was quoted as saying that the PCB chief intended to oversee the selection of the candidates for coaching jobs which were advertised last week on the cricket board’s official website as well as the national media. “There will be no coaches-finding committee this time as was the case in the past as the PCB chief feels in order to get a first-hand, clear-cut picture it will be better that he interviews the candidates himself so that he could arrive at the best possible decisions,” Sarfraz had said.

The temperamental pacer even applauded Sethi’s decision. “I personally feel that this is a right move by the PCB chief as the coaches-finding committees in the past did not deliver the required results and all their work ended in controversies.”

However, astonishingly just a day after that statement, the PCB in a media release announced that a three-man committee has been set up to scrutinize and evaluate the applications of various coaches. The committee comprises Intikhab Alam, Haroon Rashid and none other than Moin who will make its recommendations to PCB chairman after the cut-off date for applications which is May 5.

No other cricket board — be it England, Australia, India, South Africa or even Zimbabwe and Bangladesh — has done anything of this nature what the current PCB chief has begun to do. He is obviously being misled by a group of individuals who have been clinging to their jobs for God knows how many years while a number of Board chairmen have served their term and left.

Whether it was the tenure of Lt Gen Tauqir Zia, Shaharyar M. Khan, Dr Nasim Ashraf, Ijaz Butt or Zaka Ashraf, these men somehow have managed to survive the axe, which to be honest, has been long overdue.

Whether right or wrong, the reason of Pakistan cricket becoming a laughing stock purely lies with these men because they have been the ‘brains’ who have (mis) guided several chairmen in the past and continue to do the same with Sethi. While the players are held accountable from time to time for their actions, nobody dares to question the authority of the men who roam in the corridors of power in the PCB.

The talk of revamping the domestic cricket structure is nothing new. This has been going on season after season but if the rumours of abolishing the role of departments are true, then it could spell complete disaster for those involved in the game for years and have served Pakistan cricket with distinction.

Departmental cricket may have its drawbacks but there is no denying it at least provides intense competition among all stakeholders and continue to groom the budding talent. The standard of cricket is much better than those observed at the regional level if judged by national team selections when the overwhelming majority of players selected on the basis of their performances for the departments.

Pakistan cricket needs a breath of fresh air to wriggle out of a spate of self-created controversies that have maligned the country’s image. Sethi can’t absolve himself of any wrong move he makes and has already made several since taking over the PCB in February. It is time he conducted some research on people leading yet another chairman up the blind alley.