Afghanistan Cricket Board lacks transparency, accountability, governance and corruption prevention measures, the Integrity Watch said in a report released Saturday.
The report said that the board faces allegations of allegations of nepotism and favoritism as it identified 19 cricket players who had relatives in the cricket administration.
It also questioned the appointment of board members and said that the board was unwilling to provide the essential information during the research.
“The ACB is faced with multiple governance issues. First and foremost is the politicization of the appointments process of board members and the too frequent changes at executive level,” said Sayed Ikram Afzali, Executive Director of Integrity Watch. “The Afghan President who holds the prerogative on appointment of the board chairman has not been able to maintain transparency and accountability in regard to leadership changes on the board and has never provided the reasons for changes in the leadership.”
The president changed the ACB leadership four times during the last six years.
“The research shows that none of the outgoing chairmen left the board on good terms and there have been accusations of corruption, nepotism and differences with players,” the report said. “Additionally, the government has not carried out any performance appraisals on board members or after any of these changes.”
The report noted that the leadership change in cricket boards of other countries were happening following a democratic process. “Afghanistan needs to restructure the ACB based on international best practices.”
The study found that a good number of board officials’ relatives have been regularly picked for different teams while comparatively better performing players have been ignored. Although having relations with board officials and senior players is obviously not evidence of nepotism, a lack of policy on dealing with issues of conflict of interest as well as performance comparisons adds weight to the criticism, it said.
A number of senior players have not met the minimum selection requirements such as playing a certain amount of domestic cricket games or staying for a certain amount of time inside the country but they have been regularly selected in national sides which is a clear breach of the national selection principles, according to the report.
