Sir: The statement of Shehryar Khan on the first day after taking over as Chairman Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) was that Misbahul Haq will remain as team captain till the World Cup 2015. In the meantime, Chief Operating Officer Subhan Ahmed removed any semblance of doubt about the fact that the PCB will be remote controlled by Najam Sethi and that Shehryar Khan will be more than happy to work with Sethi’s policies, even at the cost of imperilling Pakistani cricket. The shocking way in which our cricket team surrendered in the Test and One Day International (ODI) series during its recently concluded tour of Sri Lanka is just the tip of the iceberg. Even more pathetic was the inertia of the top management, which utterly (and most probably deliberately) failed to perform any action of accountability of the responsible members of the tour management committee. The Board also completely failed to fix responsibility on the persons liable for not taking pre-emptive measures to save Saeed Ajmal from the ban that has been imposed on him by the International Cricket Council (ICC). This is all the more serious because many commentators and experts had warned several months ago that this situation was bound to arise. Now the PCB top management, instead of taking to task all those who botched the selection process, with particular reference to the removal of Younis Khan and the wrong selection of Sohail Tanvir and Umer Amin, have landed themselves in a total mess. Remember that these same people earlier blundered in the case of Younis Khan by relegating him to the ‘B’ category for central contracts. Why cannot the most seasoned living diplomat in the country understand the simple fact that the existence of the PCB is thanks to world class players like Younis Khan, not the other way around. It seems that everybody in the country except our PCB Chairman knows that a group of vested interests in the board is playing dirty politics, which has ruined the game, spirit and morale of our players. Since Najam Sethi took over the Board, our team has lost the Champions Trophy, lost a Test and an ODI against Zimbabwe, then lost two tournaments that were played in Dhaka a few months back, and finally yielded to the Sri Lankan team in both the Test and ODI series. After the kind of consistently negative role played by Chief Selector Moin Khan and company in all the above defeats, he still had the gall to say that Younis Khan was not considered for the ODI team because he just scored three runs in the single ODI that he played in (despite the fact that he scored 177 in an innings in the first Test versus Sri Lanka in the same tour). If a world class player can be sacked based on his poor performance in one match, why cannot the manager-cum-chief selector also be sacked after a continuous string of failures? In order to put a stop to the decline of the Pakistani cricket team, the incumbent chairman must take command of the Board in his own hands and act according to his own independent decisions after seeking the help and advice of former players (many of whom are not in the good books of the PCB). SYED NAYYARUDDIN AHMAD Lahore