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Pakistan High Commissioner backs scandalized trio

By Poornima - Friday, September 3rd, 2010   |   400 views   |  

Sport fixing

Sport fixing

The high commissioner of Pakistan stationed in UK, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, has given yet another turn to the ongoing ‘spot-fixing’ betting racket while hinting in an interview that the three tainted players, Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir could just be innocents at the receiving end of a ‘set-up’.

Hasan confirmed that the trio will not be a part of the limited-over segment of the ongoing England tour of the team. The players were dropped after a long session of intensive talks between ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat and PCB chief Ijaz Butt that carried on till the wee hours of Thursday morning.

Hasan insisted that the players are innocent until proven guilty. “The three players have said they are extremely disturbed with what has happened in the past one week, especially with regard to their alleged involvement in the crime,” said Hasan. “They have mentioned that they are entirely innocent of the whole episode and shall defend their innocence as such. They further maintain that on account of the mental torture that has deeply affected them, they are not in the right frame of mind to play the remaining matches, therefore they have requested the PCB not to consider them until their names are cleared. They are innocent until proven guilty. They are under interrogation so they have to defend themselves. They are bright young men, one of them has just broken a world record, and we will go to a court of law to defend them.”

The officials of ACSU met those of the Scotland Yard to discuss this controversial matter and the players in question will be called for questioning by the Scotland Yard early on Friday morning. Meanwhile, a local legal firm has been asked to handle the proceedings of the case along with PCB’s legal advisor, Taffazul Rizvi who is also in London.

A source who is an integral part of the investigating team said that the Pakistan government is not influencing the proceedings of the case but the Pakistan’s deputy attorney general was present in the meeting with the high commissioner. Lorgat and Ijaz Butt held yet another meeting at the Pakistan High Commission towards the evening.

The suspected players made their way to the high commission in a car with blackened glasses and were scurried through by 10 police officers across a chaotic media scrum.

The team manager Yawar Saeed that the players have been “dropped” from the remainder of the tour and that they will manage with 13-member squad in the two T20s but they will ask for replacements for the ODIs.

The ECB had already made its standing clear in the matter about not playing with the tainted players and estimates that around £10 million were at stake at the success of this series. The chairman Giles Clarke “welcomed the decision”. He hoped that this series will continue “in the spirit” with which England and Pakistan have always faced each other.

“I look forward to working with Haroon Lorgat, the ICC chief executive, and Ijaz Butt, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, and everyone involved in Pakistani cricket in taking forward cricket in Pakistan so that a proper plan exists for the whole of Pakistani cricket,” Clarke further said.

Alan Hamer also seconded the decision to sideline the trio for the rest of the series. “This is definitely the right decision going forward into the series,” told Hamer. “The week leading up to the matches has felt like a department store in the lead-up to Christmas, with no-one coming through the doors. It has been clear from our initial market research that many people have been waiting for clarity on the allegations before committing to buying tickets, so hopefully with this decision, the emphasis will now shift back to the cricket, and a contest between the past and present World Twenty20 champions.”

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