PCB blames players, legal counsels for video leak

Published Tue, May 18 10 10:22 PM

Karachi, May 18 (PTI) Pakistan Cricket Board has blamed the players and their legal counsels for the leakage of the video recordings of the inquiry committee proceedings that were held in March to look into the team''s poor performances and into reports of disunity among the team members. The video recordings were shown on the Geo television network yesterday and caused a stir as the officials and players appearing before the inquiry committee made some startling statements which were previously not publicised by the board nor the officials or players. "The board had the video recordings of the proceedings since February and nothing was leaked out to the media," PCB legal advisor, Tafazzul Rizvi told PTI. "But we had given the video and audio recordings to some of the players and their legal representatives. So it was very obvious who leaked these video recordings," Rizvi said. He said the board had kept all the proceedings of the inquiry committee confidential for the sake of Pakistan cricket, the reputation of the players and the sport itself. "But if the players want these things to come out in the open then fine they will also have to bear the consequences, the board is certainly not responsible for leaking out these confidential things," Rizvi, who was a member of the committee, said. The committee in march recommended bans on Younis Khan, Muhammad Yousuf, Shoaib Malik and Rana Naved and fines on Shahid Afridi, Kamran Akmal and Umar Akmal which the board enforced in letter and spirit. Except for Yousuf who preferred to announce his retirement from international cricket after the ban was announced, the rest of the players have all filed appeals with a single man appellate tribunal headed by Justice (retd) Irfan Qadir. Asked about the suspicions raised in the video recordings by former Pakistan team coaches, Aaqib Javed and Intikhab Alam that some players might be involved in fixing, Rizvi said suspicions could be raised easily but it was very difficult to find evidence to prove that any fixing had taken place. Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Senate standing committee on sports, Ghaffar Qureshi has said that the committee members had told the media that they had seen evidence of some players being involved in match fixing after being shown the same recordings by the board sometimes back. "That is why we came out of the meeting and said we had our suspicions and action would be taken against such players but the board later denied any player was involved in the match-fixing," he said. Qureshi said after the airing of the video recordings, the Senate committee would now hold a proper inquiry into the whole cricket set up and finalise recommendations for the betterment of the sport in the country.

Source: Web Search