Pak bans Sharjeel for 5 yrs over spot-fixing
Westley keeps place in England squad
The Pakistan Cricket Board’s anti-corruption tribunal banned test cricketer Sharjeel Khan for five years for spotfixing on Wednesday.
The tribunal backdated the ban to Feb 10, 2017, when the 28-year-old Sharjeel was first suspended during the Pakistan Super League. He was sent home from the United Arab Emirates along with Islamabad United teammate Khalid Latif.
Half of Sharjeel’s sentence will be suspended if he goes through the PCB’s rehabilitation process.
“We are going to appeal against them,” said Sharjeel’s lawyer, Shaigan Ijaz. “We are objecting to the decision because we believe three serious charges have not been proven.”
Sharjeel stood with his lawyer during a news conference but didn’t take any questions.
Sharjeel faced five charges of breaching of the PCB’s anti-corruption code. He was found guilty on all five counts by the tribunal and was handed the minimum punishment.
The three-member tribunal was headed by retired Lahore High Court judge Asghar Haider, with former PCB chairman Tauqir Zia and former Pakistan captain Wasim Bari as its members.
PCB legal advisor Tafazzul Rizvi said the verdict shows the cricket board had solid evidence against the batsman.
“He (Sharjeel) is found guilty and with this our case against the player stood vindicated,” Rizvi said. “The judgment is a proof that all the evidence was strong enough against player.”
Rizvi also said the suspended sentence doesn’t mean that the player could return to cricket immediately after completing half of his punishment.
“There is a lengthy process of rehabilitation which has to be followed,” he said.
Sharjeel made his test debut against Australia in January and scored 44 runs. He has scored 812 runs in 25 ODIs and 360 runs in 15 Twenty20 internationals.
Tom Westley kept his place in an unchanged 13-man England squad announced on Wednesday for next week’s decisive third Test against West Indies at Lord’s.
The Essex batsman has come under scrutiny after three single-figure scores at number three.
But he has been given another chance to nail down a place in the team in what will be England’s last Test before the year ending Ashes series in Australia.
Mark Stoneman and Dawid Malan have also held onto their places after both chipped in with second-innings half-centuries in the five-wicket loss to West Indies at Headingley. Left out of the starting team in Leeds, Middlesex seamer Toby Roland-Jones
and Hampshire leg-spinner Mason Crane will both hope to force their way into the XI for the series decider.
England will be aiming to return to the form that brought them a crushing innings and 209-run win in the first Test at Edgbaston. England 3rd Test squad
Joe Root (Yorkshire, capt), Moeen Ali (Worcestershire), James Anderson (Lancashire), Jonny Bairstow (Yorkshire, wkt), Stuart Broad (Nottinghamshire), Alastair Cook (Essex), Mason Crane (Hampshire), Dawid Malan (Middlesex), Toby Roland-Jones (Middlesex), Ben Stokes (Durham), Mark Stoneman (Surrey), Tom Westley (Essex), Chris Woakes (Warwickshire)
Sri Lanka will deploy unprecedented security for Thursday’s fourth one-day international against India to prevent a repeat of crowd trouble which broke out following a humiliating defeat for the home side, police said.
Some 1,000 additional police will be deployed at the 35,000-seat capacity Premadasa Stadium in Colombo while CCTV cameras will be used to monitor the crowds, police said in a statement.
“Any spectator who throws any bottles or projectiles at the players will be immediately arrested,” they said.
Large number of fans lobbed bottles
CRICKET
and other missiles and disrupted play for 32 minutes as Sri Lanka headed for their one-day international series defeat to India last Sunday.
Soon after play resumed at Pallekele with police evicting the rowdy supporters, India went onto to record a sixwicket win.
Sri Lanka’s chief cricket selectors, who resigned en masse on Tuesday, said they were heartbroken when crowds turned against the team.
“The heartbreaking incidents of unruly behaviour we witnessed at Pallekele last Sunday were the last straw for us,” they said in a statement Wednesday explaining their decision to quit.
On August 24 Sri Lankan players had to remain inside the dressing room until police cleared hostile crowds after the team lost the second ODI by three wickets.
The ODI series loss came hard on the heels of India’s three-Test series whitewash of Sri Lanka on home soil.
Selectors have borne a fair share of recent criticism, with Sri Lanka’s World Cup-winning skipper Arjuna Ranatunga accusing them of lacking “backbone”. The latest losses only compounded the misery for the national side, which suffered a humiliating ODI home series defeat against bottom-ranked Zimbabwe and bowed out early from the Champions Trophy in England.
They have also been beset by injury, with batsman Dinesh Chandimal ruled out of the remaining ODIs with a thumb injury and Chamara Kapugedara also likely to miss the matches. Fast bowler Lasith Malinga is expected to lead Sri Lanka in the next game.
Sri Lanka will play the remaining two ODI matches against India this Thursday and Sunday, and a one-off Twenty20 match against the visitors on September 6.
England bowling coach Ottis Gibson has been announced as the new head coach of South Africa, officials said on Wednesday.
Barbadian Gibson, who played two tests for West Indies, was widely expected to replace Russell Domingo when the latter’s contract ends next month and has been handed the reins of the national side in all three formats through to the end of the 2019 Cricket World Cup.
“His playing and coaching credentials are impressive and that will place the Proteas in good hands as we move towards a big home summer with both India and Australia visiting us,” Cricket South Africa CEO Haroon Lorgat said in a statement.