Corruption looms as PSL hits dark and murky waters
NO SOONER had the second edition of the Pakistan Super League got underway than the tournament was hit by cricket’s latest spotfixing scandal.
With the dust barely settled from last Thursday’s opening ceremony and the entertaining game that followed it, the next afternoon came the revelation that two Islamabad United batsmen, Sharjeel Khan and Khalid Latif, had been provisionally suspended under the Pakistan Cricket Board’s AntiCorruption Code as part of an ongoing investigation into an organisation’s alleged attempts to corrupt the tournament.
The pair were sent home in disgrace, with Shaharyar Khan, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, hinting that there could be more to follow and promising that a ‘wide-ranging investigation’ would take place ‘as part of collective efforts to protect the integrity of the sport’.
For Sharjeel in particular, the man who had lit up the latter stages of the first PSL and scored its only century so far, as well as becoming Pakistan’s new great limited-overs hope, it was quite the fall from grace – suddenly he was facing the prospect that his cricketing career could well be over.
As predicted, that was far from the end of the story as far as the PSL was concerned, and on what was still just the third day of the tournament, the news broke that three more players were being questioned.
However, the men in question, Mohammad Irfan, Zulfiqar Babar and Shahzaib Hasan, were not suspended and provisionally allowed to play on in the tournament, with PSL chairman Najam Sethi attempting to calm the ever-increasing media frenzy down by tweeting: “No more player suspensions are envisaged during PSL PROVIDED there is no NEW cause for action. Failure to promptly report any attempt to corrupt and subvert PSL will be cause for action.”
Despite the trio of Pakistan internationals all being cleared to play on in the tournament, the shadow of the investigation still loomed heavily over the PSL, and Dean Jones, coach of Islamabad United – who had seen two players sent home and a third, Irfan, questioned – admitted that “emotionally and physically the team has been through hell”.
Fortunately as far as the PSL is concerned, at the time of print no more players participating in the tournament have been caught up in the controversy. However, after a brief intermission over the weekend, the anti-corruption investigation soon saw another Pakistan international dragged into the scandal.
While the tournament took a two-day break, before decamping to Sharjah for the next round of fixtures, the PCB enjoyed no such respite, announcing on Monday that out-of-favour opener Nasir Jamshed, not selected by any franchise in the tournament, had become the third player to be provisionally suspended by the PCB.
“The PCB has provisionally suspended Nasir Jamshed from all forms of cricket for violating its anti-corruption code,” read a brief statement on Monday, the precise nature of Jamshed’s involvement not entirely clear although some reports speculated he had been the middleman between the two suspended Islamabad players and a man linked to an international betting syndicate.
In the meantime, the PCB also revoked the central contracts of Sharjeel Khan and Khalid Latif, with Sharjeel also looking likely to lose both his prospective contracts in the T20 Blast with Leicestershire and in the Caribbean Premier League.
For Jamshed, things would appear to get much worse, with the UK’s National Crime Agency announcing on Tuesday that it was “working closely” with PCB and ICC anti-corruption units and releasing a statement saying: “Two men in their 30s have been arrested by National Crime Agency officers in connection with bribery offences as part of an ongoing investigation into international cricket match spot-fixing.
“The men were arrested on Monday, February 13 and have been released on bail until April 2017 pending further enquiries.”
It is widely believed that Jamshed is one of those two men although some confusion remains given that his listed age of 27 would appear to slightly contradict information given by the NCA. The other man arrested is believed to be ‘Yousuf’, the alleged bookie who met Sharjeel Khan and Khalid Latif in order to make a deal.
The arrests mark the end of yet another turbulent few days for Pakistani cricket, although one imagines in reality it is just the beginning of the whole sordid story.