No ban on push-ups, clarifies Najam Sethi

PCB Executive Committee chairman says players can celebrate any way they want

Hours after a parliamentary committee on Wednesday expressed reservations over cricket players doing push-ups to celebrate victories during matches, chairman of PCB's Executive Committee chairman Najam Sethi clarified that the celebrations were done at the discretion of players.

Clarifying media reports, Sethi further said there was no ban on performing celebratory push-ups.

Oh for God's sake, there is no ban on pushups! In fact I think players should do 100 pushups when they score a century!! 👍

— Najam Sethi (@najamsethi) October 26, 2016

1/2 Sajda/pushups etc done @ discretion of players. PCB highly appreciates fitness training facilities of PakArmy, utilised thrice in 6 yrs

— Najam Sethi (@najamsethi) October 26, 2016

#2/2 Media should refrain from politicising Pak cricket team!

— Najam Sethi (@najamsethi) October 26, 2016

 

However, the statement contradicts Sethi's reported assurances to the parliamentary committee in which he said the practice was limited to the England tour and would not happen again.

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Sethi also went on to add that the media should refrain from politicising the country's national cricket team. He also appreciated the Pakistan Army for providing fitness training facilities to the PCB.

Earlier, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz MNA Rana Afzal raised the issue, saying players should perform nafl prayers or do sajdas rather than push-ups. Push-ups became a popular mode of celebrating personal feats among Pakistani players during their tour of England following their training camp with the Pakistan Army.

However, the PML-N MNA said cricket is "a gentleman's game" and the act of doing push-ups does not reflect the calibre of the sport. "Push-up celebration promotes a negative image of Pakistan and needs to be revisited," Khan said.



To this, PCB official Sethi assured that players no longer celebrate victories with push-ups. "It only happened during the England tour and won't happen again," Sethi said.

The trend was started by Test captain Misbahul Haq, who performed push-ups at Lord's after his first ton of English soil.



Misbah later said: "The celebrations were nothing to do with England, only a gesture for those we worked with."

After Lord's victory, members of the national side also performed push-ups to celebrate.

And the exercise was again performed later in the series by Azhar Ali for his century and by Sohail Khan for his five-for.