Pakistan bowler Akhtar tears into present cricket set-up

PAKISTAN, July 19 ... Former Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar tore into the current cricket administrators, terming them an “ignorant” bunch who are just “wasting money”.“This board is spending 150 million rupees just on salaries and it has more than 700 employees and what is the net result, nothing,” NDTV quoted Akhtar as saying.

The outspoken Akhtar, who appears as an analyst on TV these days, said people were being “rewarded” by the board these days hence the number of officials had ballooned out of proportion.The former pacer’s comments come just days after the PCB announced a 10-member team management for the 15-member squad for the upcoming tour of Sri Lanka. “I don’t know what they are trying to do but this board is full of ignorant people and it is useless trying to talk sense into them,” Akhtar said.

“When I was playing, there were lesser employees in the board and the money was well spent on cricket and we were doing well in international cricket.”Akhtar said the state of Pakistan cricket was deteriorating fast and saw little hope for the future.“There is no improvement at all. Already as a nation we are criticised daily and the same thing is now happening with our cricket because ignorant people are running cricket affairs.”