3 most embarrassing moments for Pakistan Cricket Board

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons yet again after the omission of legendary cricketer Imran Khan from a video highlighting their rich World Cup history. It was released on Independence Day to promote the 2023 Cricket World Cup in India from October 5 to November 19.

It led to several former players and fans shellacking the board for using political reasons to ignore one of the country's all-time great cricketers. The severe outrage had the PCB releasing a revised video and calling it the original version. It included clips from the 1992 World Cup when Imran famously led Pakistan from the doorsteps of elimination to World Cup glory.

The board stated that the previous version did not have the snippets featuring Imran Khan because the video was too long to post on social media.

However, it was evident that the former cricketer's recent arrest for corrupt practices played a role in the absence of Imran from the original video. Several former players and board members, including Wasim Akram and Khalid Mahmood, demanded the video be deleted while also seeking an apology from the PCB for mixing politics with sports.

Despite producing some of the greatest cricketers to play the game, Pakistan cricket has often been a subject of ridicule over the years, thanks to the PCB.

On that note, we take a look at the three most embarrassing moments for the PCB in its troubled history.

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#1 Twitter mis-spellings

Pakistan Cricket Board has been notorious for goof-ups and blatant spelling errors on Twitter and other social media sites. One such instance came in 2020 when the team had finally landed in England despite several players testing positive for COVID-19 before departing.

The board already faced an embarrassing moment when Mohammad Hafeez, who tested positive in PCB's official tests, did a private check and posted a tweet claiming otherwise.

However, further embarrassment awaited the PCB as they misspelled Pakistan as 'Pakiatan' in a Twitter post on the team departing for England.

Screenshot of the goof-up by PCB on Twitter.

Despite the correction, several fans took note and trolled the Pakistan board with memes. It wasn't the only time where PCB was left humiliated by its social media team making an egregious error on social media.

Before an India-Pakistan Asia Cup clash in 2018, the board posted highlights of the 2017 Champions Trophy final as motivation but misspelled happened as 'hapoened'.

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#2 Selling the PSL rights to a betting company

Pakistan Cricket Board faced unequivocal embarrassment when they admitted to selling the Pakistan Super League (PSL) streaming rights to a UK-based betting company from its media partner.

ITW bought the international streaming rights and sold it to 'bet365' for outside Pakistan viewers.

To accentuate matters, Bet365 took bets on the PSL matches throughout that season, with the PCB not being aware, making it an untenable position for the board to come out of.

This led to former captain Rashid Latif expressing his disbelief at how the PCB was clueless even after multiple PSL games were completed.

"I am surprised the PCB was unaware that its global media right partner had sold the international streaming rights onwards to a betting company," said Latif.

The PCB tried to wiggle its way out of the mess through denial, but to no avail, as the story had already spread around the cricketing world, causing further embarrassment for the board.

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#3 PCB faces embarrassment at its Board of Governors meeting in 2015

Another embarrassing moment for Pakistan Cricket Board came in 2015 when Ejaz Farooqi, the President of the Karachi City Cricket Association (KCCA), rebelled against the new domestic structure introduced by the board.

Despite the board playing down the incident, one eyewitness stated that Farooqi walked out of the Board of Governors meeting to protest the changes in domestic cricket that were perceived to affect teams from Karachi and Lahore.

Farooqi went out of the meeting but came back after senior officials of the board pacified him but the deadlock between the PCB and KCCA still remains over the domestic structure," said the eye witness.

This led to the KCCA and PCB butting heads, with the former refusing to send the player names for the two Karachi squads, forcing the Pakistan Cricket Board to announce the squads by themselves.