New Mazhar Majeed video surfaces: Pakistan cricket again in limelight for all wrong reasons
Pakistan cricket plunged into new depths of bedlam as a previously unseen video of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mazhar-c75448 Majeed surfaced, naming four more players in the spot-fixing scam. The video was recorded by News of the World reporters in their sting operation against Mazhar Majeed. The video surfaced on Tuesday and till then its existence was a guarded secret known only to the News of the World, the International Cricket Council and the police.
What is surprising however is that the International Cricket Council has not deemed it worthy of taking some action against the four other players in addition to the banned troika of Salman Butt, Muhammad Asif and Muhammad Aamir. The four other players whose names have been revealed include Kamran Akmal, Umar Akmal, Wahab Riaz and Imran Farhat. Even more surprising is the fact that all four of them represented Pakistan in the recently concluded series against South Africa in the http://www.senore.com/Cricket/United-Arab-Emirates-c3033.
Majeed claims he targeted these players because they are expected to remain in the team for a long time to come. However, Majeed denied the involvement of T20 skipper http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482, all rounder Abdul Razzaq, former captain Younis Khan and spinner Saeed Ajmal in any sort of fixing. According to Majeed, Ajmal is “too religious” to even think about committing to such stuff.
The footage is expected to raise the pressure on Pakistan Cricket Board. The board’s selection committee did not select Imran Farhat and Kamran Akmal for the upcoming http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746, raising serious concerns about his wicket keeping abilities.
Pakistan cricket got mired into another controversy when Zulqarnain Haider deserted the Pakistan team on its tour of the United Arab Emirates and ended up in London claiming political asylum. He reportedly received life threats after he refused to fix matches against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/South-Africa-c757. The PCB instead of investigating the claims being made by Zulqarnain Haider issued a charge sheet against him and suspended his central contract.
In the recording, Majeed is seen saying “I'll tell you who we've got then. We've got Umar Akmal, Kamran Akmal, Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif, Salman Butt, Wahab Riaz ... that's six, yeah? Imran Farhat ... that's seven out of 11 players.”
Salman Butt, Muhammad Aamir and Muhammad Asif have upcoming appeals scheduled in Doha, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Qatar-c2986. Before that, Butt and Aamir had their appeals against their suspensions rejected by an ICC tribunal, while Asif withdrew his appeal against his provisional suspension. On the other hand, the International Cricket Council’s President Sharad Pawar refused to be drawn into the controversy as he declined to comment on the fresh video linking four more Pakistani players to the spot fixing saga. However the International Cricket Council exhibited its double standards once more as it asked the PCB to drop five players from the list of 30 probable players to be included in the final World Cup squad.
Such revelations are bound to tarnish the image of cricket after the spot fixing allegations in the summer and accusations against the IPL President Lalit Modi for being involved in graft. With the cricket World Cup just three months away, this new revelation has already ruffled quite a lot many feathers. The bosses at Pakistan Cricket who were already walking about shame faced will now have further explaining to do as the spotlight has once again shifted onto Pakistan. Despite some strong show of performance in the test series against South Africa, it appears as if Pakistan cricket can only walk out of one crisis to fall into the next.
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