Hameed ignored by domestic teams

Wed, Oct 06 10 10:26 PM

Karachi, Oct 6 (PTI) Pakistan''s Test batsman Yasir Hameed, who made headlines with sensational claims of match-fixing in the team before going back on them, has been ignored by his home regions for the forthcoming National Twenty20 championship that will be held this month in Lahore. Yasir confirmed that neither his home team, Peshawar nor his adopted team, Abbotabad whom he has represented in the past in domestic cricket, had named him in their squads for the popular tournament. "I don''t know the reasons for this myself, no one is telling me anything," he said. Yasir was at the centre of the spot fixing controversy on the recent tour to England when the News of the World tabloid newspaper one week after breaking the story about three Pakistani players deliberately bowling no-balls in the Lords Test released his video interview. In the video, Yasir is heard telling the newspaper reporter that other Pakistani players are involved in betting and corruption and names matches that have been fixed. Yasir later denied that he had ever given the interview and said the video had been recorded secretly and the reporter posed as a sponsor and kept on forcing him to make general statements on the spot fixing issue. The Test batsman who played in two tests in England after a gap of nearly three years was later summoned to the Pakistan high commission for his interview and later released a statement insisting he had accused his fellow players of spot fixing. Sources in the Pakistan Cricket Board said they were not aware why Yasir was not in the Peshawar and Abbotabad teams. "Because we really don''t know of any ban on Yasir from playing domestic cricket from the PCB," one source said. But he admitted that unofficially team officials might have been advised to ignore the Test batsman. Former Test captain Younis Khan who is himself discarded from the national team is leading the Peshawar team in the national Twenty20 event for which pacer Umar Gul also plays. PTI COR PM

Source: Published>