Former PCB chief Ramiz Raja has been singing praises of his tenure in the top post of the Pakistan Cricket Board and how the steps taken during his time as PCB chairman has helped the Pakistan team.
He has been very vocal about how he wasn’t allowed to take his stuff from the office after he was officially sacked and replaced as PCB chief by Najam Sethi.
Raja also said that he would have banned “Wasim [Akram] and Waqar [Younis]” for being “tainted” by match-fixing charges after Justice Qayyum's report.
In his latest claims, he talked about removing Waqar Younis as the Pakistan bowling coach and Misbah Ul Haq as the head coach just days before T20 World Cup 2021. He said that as the chairman of the PCB, it was his right to remove them from their posts.
“They received their full payments for two years. They were given full respect. As a chairman, it was my right to dismiss them. Even now, they are talking about removing Saqlain Mushtaq and replacing him with Mickey Arthur. I made contracts in such a way that I didn’t want the board to be left with a coaching setup for three years,” Ramiz told Samaa TV.
“We had yearly contracts. They (Misbah and Waqar) would’ve left in January/February anyway. We brought new management. It wasn’t easy for me. I’ve played with Waqar, I talked to him in detail. The CEO talked to Misbah. It obviously didn’t look good that the change took place within a week or 10 days before the T20 World Cup. But I had an idea that we could only go to a certain extent with them. When I used to do commentary, I realized that a change was necessary,” Ramiz said.
Misbah Ul Haq had previously talked about the differences in vision between them and Ramiz Raja which led to them stepping down.
Misbah said during the interview with A Sports: “There wasn’t any difference between Ramiz Bhai and us. We were a part of previous management who brought us with a vision, and we worked together. Ramiz Bhai came up with his own vision. He didn’t want to work with us, so we thought to resign.”
Misbah wasn’t bitter, publicly at least; in fact, he even placed his hopes on Ramiz doing a good job as PCB chief as he was a cricketer.
