Mohsin Naqvi was chosen as the PCB's three-year chairman

His primary responsibility will be to supervise the next PSL season.

At last, the PCB conducted elections and selected Mohsin Naqvi as its full-time chairman. Naqvi was chosen for a three-year term. Without offering any additional information, the PCB announced the appointment on Tuesday, stating that he had been elected as the 37th PCB chairman without any opposition.

"I am deeply honored and humbled to have been unanimously elected as the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board," said Naqvi. "I appreciate the faith and confidence placed in me. I firmly believe that I can raise the bar for cricket in Pakistan and introduce professionalism to the sport's management."

Naqvi's appointment was widely anticipated following the resignation of Zaka Ashraf last month, who led the interim management committee and functioned as de facto chairman. Along with his resignation, Naqvi took over as chairman of the PCB's board of governors. Anwar Kakar, Pakistan's acting prime minister, appointed Naqvi, the acting chief minister of Punjab, to the cricket board.

Naqvi will remain the PCB's chief minister in addition to his role as interim chief minister of Punjab. When Ashraf resigned last week and Khawar Shah, the PCB election commissioner, temporarily assumed the chairmanship, this caused some people to take notice. Khawar, however, defended Naqvi's dual role, claiming that it was against PCB rules for a chairman to hold a "office of profit" at the same time and arguing, somewhat paradoxically, that Naqvi did not.

Naqvi's tenure as acting chief minister has already exceeded the parameters set forth in the constitution. A caretaker government in Pakistan is only allowed to hold office for a maximum of three months while the country gets ready for new elections. But Naqvi was appointed more than a year ago, in January 2023, after Pakistan's elections were postponed for a few months. Later this week, on February 8, Pakistan will hold general elections, which will ultimately bring an end to his tenure as chief minister of the country's largest province.

Although Naqvi hasn't been involved in cricket administration or has any known cricketing experience, this isn't unusual for most PCB chairmen, especially in the last ten years. With Ehsan Mani and Ramiz Raja as the exception rather than the rule, neither Najam Sethi nor Zaka Ashraf, the two men who have occupied that position for the better part of the last ten years, had such experience prior to being appointed.

The first significant assignment for Naqvi will be to supervise the Pakistan Super League, which starts on February 17. Even though a large portion of the tournament's administrative work, such as the draft, venue selections, and ticket sales, has already been completed, the league is undoubtedly the most lucrative event for Pakistani cricket each year.

The hosting of the one and only ICC event that Pakistan has been granted this decade will be the other urgent task for the new chairmen. The nation is set to host the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy, which calls for extensive administrative and logistical planning, including the building of suitable facilities to accommodate up to eight teams at once. That kind of event has not been hosted by Pakistan since the World Cup in 1996.

Additionally, he needs to think through how he will handle the possible backlash in the event that India decides not to travel to Pakistan, as historical precedent indicates it might. Last year, when a similar situation arose ahead of the Asia Cup, then-PCB chairman Sethi consented to a "hybrid" model in which most of the later games were played in Sri Lanka and a few initial games were played in Pakistan. Later, a number of the management committee members voiced their displeasure with that arrangement, blaming it on player fatigue that resulted in multiple injuries. The PCB has made it clear that they won't consent to this kind of arrangement.