Local organisers slam PCB’s strategy

KARACHI: Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has failed to properly market the One-day Pentangular Cup, which should have attracted tens of thousands of people in a big city like Karachi, local organisers told ‘The News’.
Only a few dozen spectators are coming to see the matches despite free entry and lucrative prizes offered by a private company.
An organiser disclosed that efforts were being made to persuade Shahid Afridi to play in the tournament.
Karachi, a city of more than 20 million people, is considered one of the biggest cricketing nurseries, even bigger than Kolkata, but surprisingly the cricket-crazy nation hasn’t thought much of the tournament although many star cricketers, including Shoaib Malik, Umar Gul, Kamran Akmal and Mohammad Sami, are in action.
The selection for the World Cup 2015 is to be made on the basis of performances in this tournament.
PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan should ask the PCB’s marketing department why people are not coming to see the matches, said the organiser.
“It is lack of good planning and poor marketing due to which people did not turn up at the stadium,” he said.
Commissioner Karachi Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui, who made arrangements for the tournament on emergency basis when PCB shifted the tournament due to fog in Punjab, said that it was awful that despite good security arrangements, free entry for school and college students and prizes people did not come to see the matches.
He said that city administration was ready to provide all possible help to PCB to make the tournament successful.
A first-class cricketer, who is now an organizer, said that PCB officials themselves did not want people to come to see the matches because they did not like workload. “They do their job as a formality, not as a national duty,” he said.
He said that unless the local cricket bodies were taken on board, all such events would fail. He said that KCCA had more than 400 registered clubs with thousands of cricketers, but the PCB had always ignored them. “You see what late Dr Muhammad Ali Shah did when he organised a match of retired stars in 2012 in the same stadium. Dr Shah involved the local organisers and people came to see the matches in thousands although the war on terror was at its peak,” he said. “Only announcement of free entry cannot bring the spectators,” he added.
He demanded that all entry charges should be abolished. “Only receipts should be given to the spectators, one part of which should be put for prize draw of Omar Associates,” he said.
Meanwhile, Nadeem Omar, who is organising a ceremony in the honour of Omar Associates cricket team on Sunday (today), is likely to announce more incentives for those who would come to see the matches at the National Stadium.