Najam Sethi has withdrawn from the race to become the next head of the Pakistan Cricket Board. 

Sethi was favorite to continue as PCB chairman after he headed the interim management committee, appointed by Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif last December. The interim committee’s tenure was due to expire Wednesday.

The prime minister is patron of the cricket board in Pakistan and directly appoints two members on the PCB board of governors — and one of them is elected as the chairman.

The Pakistan Peoples Party, headed by Asif Ali Zardari, is Sharif’s coalition partner in the government and over recent weeks has demanded that its candidate should get be the new PCB chairman because it holds the sports ministry in the coalition.

Salaam everyone! I don’t want to be a bone of contention between Asif Zardari and Shehbaz Sharif. Such instability and uncertainty is not good for PCB. Under the circumstances I am not a candidate for Chairmanship of PCB. Good luck to all stakeholders.

— Najam Sethi (@najamsethi) June 19, 2023

“I don’t want to be a bone of contention between Asif Zardari and Shehbaz Sharif,” Sethi posted on Twitter. “Such instability and uncertainty is not good for PCB. Under the circumstances I am not a candidate for Chairmanship of PCB. Good luck to all stakeholders.”

Former PCB chairman Zaka Ashraf, who has the backing of the PPP, is expected to be one of the two candidates appointed by the prime minister.

Sethi replaced Ramiz Raja last December and was given 120 days to reinstate the sport’s domestic structure under the 2014 constitution, after the 2019 board’s constitution was scrapped.

Sethi took some major cricket decisions that included the appointment of Mickey Arthur as director of cricket and Grant Bradburn as head coach. Last week, ex-South Africa international Morne Morkel was appointed as the national team’s bowling coach for a period of six months.

Sethi’s hybrid model for the Asia Cup, which will see India playing all its matches in Sri Lanka, also got approval from the Asian Cricket Council. India had refused to travel to Pakistan for the Asia Cup because of strained political relations between the two countries. But Sethi managed to get four games in Pakistan while the remaining nine Asia Cup games will be played in Sri Lanka from Aug. 31-Sept. 17