The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) had landed in big trouble on Thursday after the International Cricket Council (ICC) pulled the cricket body for several violations and misconduct before their Asia Cup 2025 clash against United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Wednesday. The Pakistan vs UAE clash was delayed after the Men in Green protested ICC’s rejection of its demand to remove match referee Andy Pycroft.
The whole controversy stemmed after the India vs Pakistan clash on September 14 when Suryakumar Yadav’s men avoided handshakes as a protest to the Pahalgam attacks. Following this, PCB demanded to withdraw from the tournament and demanded Pycroft’s removal.
However, ICC rejected PCB’s demand. As a protest, Pakistan came an hour late to the stadium for their clash against UAE and violated several rules despite repeated warnings. According to a PTI report, ICC CEO Sanjog Gupta wrote a letter to the PCB.
“The ICC CEO Sanjog Gupta has written to the PCB stating that the board has been guilty of repeated Players and Match Officials Area (PMOA) violations on match day. PCB is in receipt of the e-mail,” a tournament source told the news agency.
What did Pakistan Cricket Board do ?
According to the report, Pakistan breached the rules by allowing media manager Naeem Gillani to film a meeting between Pycroft, its head coach Mike Hesson and captain Salman Ali Agha before the toss. The ICC had made it clear that media managers were barred from such meetings.
ICC agreed with PCB that, in order to help resolve the matter related to the toss on September 15, Pycroft would meet the team captain and manager before the toss of yesterday’s match. “The purpose was to eradicate any regrettable misunderstanding or miscommunication which may have arisen at the time of the toss,” the tournament source said.
“PCB brought to the meeting their media manager and insisted that he be present during the conversation,” he added. The Media manager was refused entry by the ICC Anti-Corruption Manager because he wanted to take his mobile phone into the PMOA, which is tightly regulated.
The source that the PCB threatened to withdraw from the match if the media manager was not allowed to attend and then insisted on filming (without audio) the conversation, which was a “further violation of the PMOA regulations.”
“The ICC, in order to preserve the interest of the sport, the tournament and the stakeholders involved accepted PCB’s asks although this demonstrated a complete disregard for the sanctity of the PMOA, where the meeting took place,” the source said.
The ICC was also not made aware of how PCB planned to use the filmed footage. The world body has also taken exception to a PCB media release that claimed Pycroft had “apologised”, when in fact he had merely expressed regret over a miscommunication.
Earlier, PCB media manager Waseem was denied entry into a subsequent meeting inside the PMOA, where filming is strictly prohibited.