LAHORE Triggering yet another major controversy, a three-member sub-committee of the Senate on Sports has confirmed that one or more Pakistani cricketers and some other members of their camp were involved in match-fixing during the last tour of Australia.
“The sub-committee went through the record in the meeting and there are verbal, video and solid proofs that one or more players and soome other persons are involved in the match-fixing,” one of the members of the committee, Haroon Akhtar, categorically said after a meeting with the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) officials at the National Cricket Academy here on Monday.
The other two members were Ghaffar Qureshi (as head) and Tahir Mashhadi.
From the PCB side, chairman Ijaz Butt, chief operations officer Wasim Bari and coach of the Australian tour Intikhab Alam attended the meeting.
“The PCB has done good work on the investigation over the fiasco and we give all credit to them on doing the job,” he said.
“The discussion needs more time to reach the other players involved and to nab the entire network. We are bound not to announce the names of the players in public,” Haroon said.
All the members parried away all the questions, asking to disclose the names of the players involved.
“We can't disclose the names of the players but it is enough to say that some players are involved,” they said.
“We can't give further information because it will defame the country,” they said.
“There are indications towards something fishy. When a player who is quite capable of scoring 50, scores 10, drops easy catches and plays unnecessary lofted shots it points towards match-fixing or groupings,” Mashhadi said.
Asked if any of those players were included in the recently announced Pakistan Twenty20 World squad, the Senators turned diplomatic, saying “We have given the recommendations to the PCB not to select those players in the team.”
Asked if Shoaib Malik and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, who have been banned for one year, were involved, again the reply was not given.
Pakistan faced a whitewash in Australia, losing three Tests, five One-day Internationals and a Twenty20 International.
This performance promoted the PCB to hold a thorough inquiry, which resulted in one-year ban on Rana and Shoaib, indefinite ban on Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan, besides cash penalties on Shahid Afridi, Kamran Akmal and Umar Akmal. Surprisingly none of them dared to move the court against the punishments.
Asked why the PCB was not showing courage to disclose the names of match-fixers, Haroon said let the committee and the PCB complete the entire investigation first.
Regarding another point of the agenda, Ghaffar said the reconciliation between the PCB chairman and Director General Javed Miandad remained successful and now the former Test captain would carry out all assignments given to him by the chairman.
The committee also claimed the PCB's financial position showed improvement due to its austerity campaign.
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