Shortly after taking up the role, news broke that a majority of the PCB’s Board of Governors rejected his appointment, with a resolution written by five of the seven board members demanding “the unconstitutional post of MD PCB be declared null and void”. They also rejected “any move to abolish departments and regions in the restructuring of domestic cricket”, one of Wasim’s stated aims.

Speaking on the Wisden Cricket Weekly Podcast, Wasim dismissed any questions surrounding his role and explained how the controversy had come about.

“The Prime Minister is a patron of the cricket board,” said Wasim. “He basically said that we need to put an end to this nonsense and move on. He’s been hugely supportive of the reforms that we’re trying to put in place because he’s trying to do something similar within the government. It’s all good so far and we’re still fully focused on what we’ve got to do.”

Wasim’s ‘Moment of the Week’, a regular feature on the podcast, summed up how integral cricket is to the Pakistani people.

“How many Prime Ministers around the world would, in the middle of a political speech, start talking about reforms to the domestic structure?” he said. “Prime Minister Imran Khan was doing a speech about two days ago addressing a lobby and a big group of people about various things around the economy, and then moved onto the domestic structure and how important it was.

“You couldn’t really ask for anything more, to be honest. As Pakistan Cricket Board is trying to drive reforms and changes, you’ve got an ex-Test captain who’s also the prime minister [backing them].”