Kathmandu, November 15
The International Cricket Council has named industrialist Basant Chaudhary and former cricket administrator Binay Raj Pandey as coordinators of its advisory committee for Nepal.
The names of Chaudhary and Pandey were finalised after a two-member delegation of the ICC comprising Chairman of Associates Imran Khwaja and ICC finance officer Ammar Sheikh held talks with stakeholders of the game in Nepal.
The advisory committee will now work till July 2017 to review the statute of Cricket Association of Nepal, and to suggest amendments to it to pave the way for elections. According to sources, an informal understanding has been reached to allow Chaudhary to coordinate the committees activities with the government and Pandey to look into the statute and the structure of CAN.
Committee general secretary Pawan Agrawal has been given the authority to convene the committee.
Meanwhile, the ICC has declined a request by the committee members to allow the panel to function as Nepal’s cricketing body until elections are held. Committee member Deepak Koirala says the panel has been given a deadline of June 27 to finish its work.
The ICC, which has handed a ToR to the committee, has given the committee authority to decide whether it wants to turn CAN into a board or not. Nepal’s government and the ICC had earlier agreed to form a cricket board to replace CAN.
Former CAN President Binay Raj Pandey, Ministry of Sports Joint Secretary Chudamani Sharma, former CAN Vice-president Deepak Koirala, former skipper Pawan Agrawal, Sports Council’s Rohit Dahal and businessman Basant Chaudhary, and the ICC Ammar Sheikh are on the committee.
The ICC named the members of the committee few weeks after CEO David Richardson came to Nepal in September and held talks with local stakeholders.
Nepal’s Cricket Association was suspended by the ICC in April this year citing government interference in the administration of the sport in the country.
The committee, which is to review Nepal’s cricket association’s charter and to prepare a plan to establish a new board, had been in limbo after the government said it could not function if the ICC dictates terms to the government. However, the naming of Nepali coordinators for the committee is likely to have been aimed at addressing the government’s concern.
Following the suspension of Cricket Association of Nepal by the ICC in April, the international body has been in regular consultation with local stakeholders. The ICC is learnt to have tried hard to get the Chatur Bahadur Chand (‘elected CAN’) faction to come on board the committee before formally proposing to the government names of people it wants on the committee.
