The Pakistan Cricket board governing body has appointed Faisal Hasnain, former chief financial officer at the International Cricket Council, as its new chief executive, filling a void that was created in September when former incumbent Wasim Khan stepped down.
Hasnain, a qualified UK chartered accountant with a career of over 35 years in finance and sports administration, will formally take up his role in January 2022.
He served as the ICC’s chief executive between 2002-08 and then again between 2010-17.
Between stints at the ICC, he was the managing director of Zimbabwe Cricket from 2017-18.
From 2009 to 2010, meanwhile, he worked as the chief operating officer (and then for a short period as the chief executive) of Dubai Golf, after moving into sport in the early 2000s.
Prior to this, he was a financial controller at the Citigroup organisation between 1992 and 2002 and also worked at both Ernst & Young, and Chase Manhattan.
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By GlobalDataHasnain said: "I feel honoured and privileged to have been awarded this once in a lifetime opportunity …
"These are highly exciting times in Pakistan cricket and I look forward to working very closely with my colleagues at the PCB."
Ramiz Raja, the PCB's chairman (who himself only took up that post in mid-September) added: "Faisal is a familiar figure in world cricket and is highly regarded, respected and trusted for his excellence in corporate governance, financial management and commercial acumen. With the plans I have for the PCB, Faisal will be a perfect fit as he can utilise his vast experience and knowledge."
Hasnain replaces Khan, who resigned from his post four months before the scheduled end of his contract.
Khan, who arrived as the chief executive, on a three-year contract, in early 2019, was already reportedly undecided about carrying on after the end of his current term, before the arrival of Raja as PCB chairman changed the power balance within the governing body.
Khan had been offered a three-year extension while the previous chair Ehsan Mani was in charge, but that offer was never confirmed before Mani left earlier this year.
The clock then began ticking for the PCB to secure a replacement – the body’s internal regulations state that the post must be filled within the 90 days after an incumbent leaves.
While Khan did achieve notable success in terms of bringing international cricket back to Pakistan, notably in securing the first test tour to the country in a decade (from Sri Lanka in 2019), both England and New Zealand, over the course of two weeks in September, withdrew from what would have been those countries’ first trips to Pakistan since 2005 and 2003 respectively.
This came as a hammer blow to the overall goal of bringing national teams back on tours to Pakistan after the team spent a decade playing its ‘home’ fixtures in the UAE due to various terrorist attacks in Pakistan in the late 2000s.
Pakistan’s next men’s home international series sees the team take on the West Indies in a limited-overs series starting today, with a last-minute deal struck between the PCB and the ICC meaning fans worldwide can watch all the action live on the ICC TV streaming platform.
The partnership, announced over the weekend, will mean fans in countries where the PCB does not already have existing broadcast deals in place – Australia, mainland Europe, and South East Asia being some of the key regions where this will apply – will be able to live-stream every ball from the three T20 and three One-Day International matches scheduled.
Deals are already in place between the PCB and various broadcast partners in the Middle East and North Africa, the Caribbean, New Zealand, the UK, the Indian subcontinent (excluding Pakistan), sub-Saharan Africa and North America.
Those agreements cover Pakistan’s home series’ until 2023, as well as the next two editions of the domestic Pakistan Super League T20 franchise competition.
ICC.TV is the governing body’s own in-house streaming service, launched in partnership with Endeavor Streaming through a deal struck in February this year. It is also providing coverage of the ongoing Australian 2021-22 season across multiple European and Asian markets.
Domestically, fans will be able to stream all the West Indies series on the official mobile app of Daraz (the e-commerce Pakistan-founded firm which is the series’ title sponsor), while live radio commentary will also be available.
Last week, the PCB reached an out-of-court settlement with PTV, the country’s state-run broadcaster PTV, bringing to an end a legal wrangle that had threatened to leave home series played by the country’s men’s national team without a domestic TV partner.
Despite this latest development, however, the West Indies series is not set to be covered domestically by PTV, hence the only option for home fans being to live-stream via the Daraz app.
PCB and PTV, thanks to a mediation that reportedly went through the office of the Pakistan prime minister and former national team captain Imran Khan, agreed a revised version of the deal which they originally struck in September 2020 (with I-Media Communication Services as a third party) and that the PCB had attempted to terminate late last month.
Late last month, a court in Lahore issued a stay order to the PCB for violating an agreement with PTV and blocked the body from granting rights for upcoming national team action to private channels as its existing agreement with the state broadcaster still has two years to run.
When it was struck, the PTV agreement severed the PCB’s ties with Ten Sports, the broadcaster which had regularly covered home Pakistan series’ since the 2000s.