Banning me for Pakistan tour is embarrassing for PCB, PM Nawaz: Manase

Former Zimbabwe cricket chairman is serving a four-year suspension for taking Zimbabwe cricket team to Pakistan

Former Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) chairman said on Friday his removal from the post for leading the national cricket team for Pakistan tour is an embarrassment for the Pakistan Cricket Board and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Criticising a four-year suspension imposed on him by the Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) for the Zimbabwe cricket team's tour of Pakistan in May, Wilson Manase said the decision to ban him “embarrasses the Pakistan Cricket Board and the Office of the Prime Minister of Pakistan who was so grateful of the tour that he wrote to our own president thanking him”.



Zimbabwe toured Pakistan in May 2015 to become the first Test playing nation to visit the country after an attack on the Sri Lankan team in 2009. However, Manase faces suspension for taking the national cricket team on a tour to Pakistan without due permission.

“I did not single-handedly let the team go there with all the officials,” he told NewsDay.

“The board is made up of individuals and the leader of the delegation was Ozias Bvute,” Manase added.



The former Zimbabwe cricket chairman said he will appeal against the ruling at the administrative court, as proper procedures had not been followed. “The decision to single out myself when the charge was against ZC boggles the mind. The charge sheet did not put me as a defendant in the matter. There are so many grounds of appeal to the Administrative Court,” he upheld.

“Rather than farm out the case to an outside arbitrator, the SRC became the aggrieved party, the judge and the executioner. What this means is that they became the adjudicators in a case in which they had an interest,” he said.

“Therefore, the rules of natural justice, equity and good conscience, were violated by the SRC. That is a very strong ground of appeal to the Administrative Court.”



He concluded that cricket in Zimbabwe is marred with “certain personalities with vested interests and that’s the cause of the demise of sport”.

The article originally appeared on News Day.