The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : PCB unhappy with Procter and Bucknor’s presence

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PCB unhappy with Procter and Bucknor’s presence

Karachi: The Pakistan Cricket Board is unhappy with the appointments of Mike Procter and Steve Bucknor as officials in the one-day series against Bangladesh starting on Tuesday.

PCB Chairman Nasim Ashraf said the Board will talk to the International Cricket Council on this matter.

“I will have our Director (cricket operations) speak to his counterpart in the ICC on this issue,” Ashraf said.

PCB’s reluctance to have Procter be the match referee in Pakistan matches has its origins in the infamous 2006 Oval Test where Australian umpire Darrell Hair’s five-run penalty for ball tampering culminated in a forfeiture.

Bucknor was removed by the ICC from the Perth Test of the India-Australia Test series after he made several blunders in the Sydney Test.

Ashraf, however, did not see Pakistan as a weak member of the ICC even though the world governing body reinstated Hair into its Elite Panel. “This is a wrong impression that Pakistan has no voice in the ICC.

That is not true. Let me tell you in clear words that Hair will not officiate in our matches even though the ICC has reinstated him.

“The ICC allowed Hair back because he had completed a six-month rehabilitation process and all the concerned people gave him good reports for his improvement in man management. Hair has been a top umpire as far as his decisions are concerned, but he was sidelined because of his poor management skills,” he said. — PTI

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