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Chairman Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Shaharyar Khan on Wednesday defended the appointment of former Test player Mudassar Nazar as director of the National Cricket Academy (NCA) over more qualified coaches in the country.

When a reporter drew the attention of Shaharyar to the fact that Mudassar didn’t enjoy a very good reputation as coach in the past while attached with the national teams and did not carry any coaching qualifications, the PCB chief said he had been picked because of his experience.

The PCB appointed a three-member committee comprising Shaharyar himself, Director Cricket Operations PCB, Saleem Altaf and former Test captain Imtiaz Ahmed to pick the director of the academy and other coaches for it.

Last week, after deliberating for weeks, the committee appointed Mudassar who has done no coaching course at any level.

The interesting thing is that while advertising for this post, the Board had said that it would prefer those coaches who had done Level-IV courses. But in the selection process although the committee interviewed people like Mushtaq Mohammad and Jalaluddin, both former Test players, who are Level-III coaches apparently Shaharyar insisted on selecting Mudassar.

Sources said although the DCO and Imtiaz had supported the appointment of Mushtaq Mohammad, a former Test captain, and someone who enjoyed great success with the senior team in the 1990s as coach, Shaharyar used his veto power to appoint Mudassar despite his lack of qualification which was a pre-requisite in the advertisements placed for the director and coaching positions.

Ironically, when the PCB had appointed former England player Bob Woolmer as coach of the Pakistan team in 2004 in place of Javed Miandad it had defended its decision by saying it had brought in a highly qualified coach with lots of experience as coach compared to Miandad who has no coaching degrees.

Source:The News