The Oracle has spoken, shall we say? But one is not certain if, like his patron General (retired) Pervez Musharraf, the chief of Pakistan Cricket Board, Dr Nasim Ashraf, is listening.
Majid ‘Majestic’ Khan surprised the pundits and hoi polloi alike when he launched into a blistering attack in a news conference last week on the (mis) doings of the current board and where the game that is treated by the teeming millions of this South Asian nation next only to religion stands.
Of course, everybody — Charlie and his aunt — is entitled to his or her opinion and can blitz to their liking but the matter is slightly different when someone as upright as Majid Khan chooses to stand up.
He is normally a very quiet person, who prefers to keep to himself. One would be hard-pressed to recall when did the stylish and laidback former opening batsman last speak!
Majid’s frank analysis must be taken seriously, for he also speaks from experience as a top past administrator, serving the PCB as its chief executive in the late Nineties.
One of the three famous Cambridge-educated cousins including illustrious Imran Khan and Javed Burki to have captained Pakistan, Majid was leading the PCB in a difficult era when the match-fixing and betting scandal hit the game.
He made a genuine attempt to purge Pakistan Cricket of notorious elements but was shown the door — perhaps, for the same reasons. One recalls how the talk then veered around how Pakistan Cricket would have been a different enterprise had he stayed in the PCB echelons a little while longer.
Majid broke his silence with some resonance in Lahore — home to PCB headquarters. Stating the obvious he described how the reins of the PCB have been handed over to friends of the president, who happens to be the patron-in-chief of the board.
In the recent past, former Corps Commander (Margallah) Tauqir Zia and ex-career diplomat Shahryar M Khan have served as PCB chairmen at the pleasure of Musharraf.
But Ashraf takes the cake. As if being the NCHD chairman was not enough of a prized position, he has continued to preside over the dwindling fortunes of Pakistan Cricket without remorse.
A more self-respecting man would have retreated into private life after the Waterloo in last year’s World Cup in the West Indies, where Pakistan lost to part-timers from Ireland and could not even make it into the second round. Mind you, some of the Irish players had to take extra leave from their employers back home to continue playing the World Cup after their sensational drubbing of Pakistan.
But Ashraf remained unmoved before incessant calls for him to resign forced the cricket czar to send in a belated note to Musharraf, who, obviously being a caring undertaker and friend, refused to accept it.
No sooner had the general declined to accept the resignation, Ashraf was holding a news conference to announce a slew of revolutionary ideas to change the fortunes of Pakistan Cricket.
While Pakistan Cricket has prospered financially — thanks to the phenomenal injection of money into the game globally — the cricketing prowess itself has rapidly declined.
Failure to enforce discipline in particular, been a major cause of this slide. As a result, we have had the spectacle of Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Asif going astray and, in the bargain, bring a bad name to Pakistan Cricket more than once.
And when the Ashraf-led PCB decided to lay down the law, it did so with such a heavy hand that even the worst detractors of Shoaib Akhtar felt he was being victimized. The five-year ban turned into a soap opera that the electronic media milked to their liking whilst Pakistan Cricket became a laughing stock around the world.
Majid also made sense when he questioned why the PCB did not hold Inzamam to account for The Oval Test fiasco two years ago, when his refusal to bring his team out to the field over charges of ball tampering led umpire Darrel Hair to forfeit a game, which ironically Pakistan was poised to win handsomely.
He also laid bare the irony in spending millions of rupees to force the controversial umpire’s ouster only for him to return to the game, fully rehabilitated.  
There are other discipline issues over which one can go into details but suffice is to say that Pakistan Cricket has seen the worst order during Ashraf’s time.
Also from time to time, allegations of financial corruptions have been made. Majid was equivocal about bringing the accounts before the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly for audit.
Majid also revealed that when he presided over the PCB, he had a staff of only 17 people but now the number was a phenomenal 703. If true, this figure alone is an indicator of the board’s financial ‘health’. It is well known that the cream of the PCB hierarchy draw handsome emoluments.
The former Pakistan captain also made an interesting observation about local cricket associations, which have been sidelined by the current board on the pretext that these bodies are corrupt.
According to Majid, the said pretext is a crafty deception to create a schmooze so that the current lot could keep all powers to themselves.
These associations are the real resource of producing good players, Majid observed, and pointed to how the England and Wales Cricket Board grant a million pounds each to the counties annually to reinforce their ability to do so.
In the end, Majid offered to take charge of the PCB and clean the mess. It is a proposition that any thinking patron would gladly lap up. However, with Musharraf having completely deluded himself with visions of retaining political power and then providing some to friends like Ashraf, it is a tall order.