PCB to re-investigate Twenty20 match
LAHORE, July 4: A Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) committee, headed by Brig Salahuddin, will again investigate the controversial incident of the first Twenty20 Cup’s match in which Test all-rounder Shoaib Malik, leading Sialkot Stallions, made headlines by throwing a match deliberately against Karachi Zebras. The committee will meet on July 15 at the Qadhafi Stadium and it has summoned the match referee and the match umpires to give their reports.
The tournament was played in April this year and Shoaib stunned the public when he later confessed in the post-match live interview on TV that he deliberately threw the match in order to prevent Lahore Eagles from qualifying for the final.
Shoaib was later penalised with a one-Test ban and 75 percent match fees of the two ODIs which he paid during the last tour of the West Indies.
The PCB besides penalising Shoaib also allowed the Eagles to play the final, after declaring the Zebras-Stallions match as null and void.
When contacted PCB director cricket operations, Saleem Altaf, confirmed that the meeting had been summoned but he dispelled the impression that the step was taken on the instructions of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in the wake of international body’s fear that the act of Shoaib constituted match-fixing and the punishment given to the cricketer was not enough.
“To my knowledge there is no move from the ICC to reinvestigate the matter and the decision was taken because I was not satisfied with the first report of the same committee,” Saleem, the former Test bowler said.
“The committee in its first report, only made suggestions for future but it did not mention the real story about the incident for which it was formed,” he said.
“Yes, the ICC, soon after the incident, asked the PCB about a report in this connection which was sent and after which no further communication held between the board and the international body in this connection,” the director said.
Asked if the issue was raised in the recent ICC meetings held in London in the last week of June, Saleem said that it was not discussed in those meetings which he attended but he had no knowledge about the meeting attended by the PCB Chairman Shaharyar M. Khan.