LAHORE: Former national side captain Salim Malik has claimed that the decision of independent adjudicator of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) in the ICC’s transcript case has gone in his favour and that he’ll now approach the board to grant him a ‘No Objection Certificate’ after claiming he had received a job offer from abroad.

“I will request the PCB to grant an NOC as I have got an offer [for a job] from abroad. Hopefully the board will oblige me because in my view Monday’s decision of adjudicator retired Justice Fazle Miran Chouhan has gone is in my favour,” Salim told a media conference here on Tuesday, a day after the announcement of verdict in the case based on a transcript of video cassettes recorded in April, 2000, allegedly having objectionable material relating to match-fixing scam.

“As Justice Chouhan in his order has said the cassettes [on the basis of which this case was filed] has no validity because it has never been verified by the ICC or the PCB in 20 years and until its verification these carries no weight, so till the verification’s result no case against me,” Saleem, who was accompanied by his panel of lawyers, further said.

He said what he had done wrong as he was fighting his case for the last 20 years just because he believed he was not guilty.

“Why didn’t the PCB had asked for character certificates from other cricketers who were also fined by the Justice Malik Qayyum Commission? But the PCB not only appointed them on key posts in the past it did not receive the amount of fine yet from them. Whereas I am cleared by a court of law,” he said. “I am sorry to say that the media has never sought answers from those [penalized] cricketers and the PCB when they were appointed on those posts. However, the media have been repeatedly grilling just me, saying that I had been banned from cricket for life.”

He dispelled the impression created by the PCB in its press statement over the decision on Monday that he had to give a character certificate.

“I have been cleared by court of law and for the last many years I have the stance that the ICC’s transcript case against me is nothing as the PCB had never provided me the cassettes. And neither the PCB nor the ICC could get these cassettes verified in 20 years time,” he said.

Salim vowed if the PCB does not issue the NOC, he has other legal means to seek it, while adding he was never life ban since he was cleared from that ban in 2008 and the PCB did not challenge that decision of the court.

He said it was PCB’s job whether to verify the cassettes or not as the justice had only said that the PCB could not use these against him, until its verification.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2020