PCB was warned of bookie links – ex-PCB chief Tauqir Zia
PCB’s former chairman, Tauqir Zia, has said that the board was notified before team’s tour to England that some of Pakistani players had relations to illegal bookies. Zia, who chaired Pakistan Cricket Board for almost four years was
chairman from 1999 to 2003, made his claims early today while talking to an Australian TV channel.
The former chairman said that the board officials were warned off player’s links with illegal bookmakers well in time before the start of tour so PCB should have been very watchful during the tour. “The Pakistan management, the manager,
and everybody should have been careful,” said Zia.
Lt General (retd) Tauqeer Zia also claimed that the ICC had informed the Pakistan Cricket Board in writing after the Australia tour earlier this year that it suspected six Pakistani players of rigging Sydney Test and all of them should
be kept under a close check.
“I know the ICC had told the PCB this year to monitor these players because they had got hold of some SMS messages these players exchanged with suspected bookmakers," told Zia.
Pakistan’s Test captain Salman Butt and two fast bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir were suspended by the ICC after the trio was alleged of being involved in spot-fixing during the Test series in England. Zia also revealed that
during his tenure as PCB chief, he had been asked to include a player into http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 squad who was purportedly involved in match-fixing, but he (Zia) declined to pick the player.
"I was a serving army officer and there's a gentleman who rings me up and said 'so and so should be included in the team because he fixes matches and we get money'. So I said you are threatening a man in uniform ... you go to h**l
and that man is not going to be put in the team. And he never was included in the side."
The Australian TV channel also reports that the International Cricket Council was also concerned about the alleged bookie Mazhar Majeed when he was in Australia during Pakistan's devastating tour of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 in 2009-10, but ICC never
passed on its concerns to Cricket Australia (CA). The player agent http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mazhar-c75448 Majeed was secretly filmed by the British Tabloid, the News of the World (NOTW), accurately predicting no-balls that would be bowled by Pakistan’s new ball pair during the Lord's Test.
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