PCB chief files defamation suit against Akhtar

Banned pacer Shoaib Akhtar's never-ending woes have been compounded further with Pakistan Cricket Board Chairman Nasim Ashraf on Friday slapping a Rs 220 million defamation suit against him. Tafazzul Rizvi, the legal counsel for Ashraf, filed the suit in a civil court in Lahore headed by Judge Hina Muzaffar. The court will begin hearing the case from Saturday. Shoaib ban upheld The defamation suit has been filed against Shoaib for making allegations on a television show that the PCB Chairman had demanded money from him and other players for allowing them to sign contracts with the lucrative Indian Premier League. Shoaib later retracted his claims and also made an unconditional apology before the appellate tribunal hearing his appeal against the five-year ban imposed on him by the disciplinary committee of the board. Shoaib apologised for causing "grief and pain in particular to the Chairman of the board with the unsubstantiated and damaging allegations against him". Rizvi said the filing of the defamation suit was a natural process of law. As you are aware that we had already served a legal notice on behalf of Chairman PCB on Shoaib Akhtar for the defamation and defamatory statements he made on TV against the Chairman, Rizvi said.

Kolkata waiting for IPL stand on Shoaib

New Delhi: Despite the PCB making it clear that the ban on fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar does not stand in the way of him representing Kolkata Knight Riders, the team would rather wait for further clarification from the governing council of the IPL, Joy Bhattacharya, marketing head of the Shah Rukh Khan-owned franchise, told CNN-IBN on Wednesday. "Any player joining us from within our group is good news. But we haven't got any official word and we would just like to have that. But it is not the question of one franchisee but the IPL themselves. They have a rule and code of conduct and once we clear all that then only the franchisee comes into play," Bhattacharya said. He further said, "It is not the question of just us. Firstly, it would be Pakistan Cricket Board giving us the formal intimation to us and then the IPL looking into it. And only after those two hurdles are crossed, we would be more than happy to review where we can play him." Earlier, the PCB had denied Shoaib Akhtar to play in the cash-rish domestic Twenty20 competition backed by the BCCI. The IPL organising committee, too, had clarified that Shoaib won't be able to play as his board had banned him from plying his trade not just in Pakistan, but elsewhere too. "Now, there is a need to a formal intervention from the PCB to the IPL and then it would be from the IPL to the individual franchises and from there on we will taking it forward," Bhattacharya said. Referring to the recent controversy and the subsequent ban on Mumbai Indians player Harbhajan Singh, Bhattacharya said Kolkata would be cautious before taking any decision. "We have to be very careful in observing all the codes and the guidelines of the IPL. If we have bid for him, we want him on our team but as you must have seen the IPL till now, they are very strict as far as the code of conduct is concerned. "Shoaib wants to be a part of the team. We will have to look at his physical fitness and then we will take a decision to play him. But whatever we want or we would like, everything depends on what the IPL decides and we would be abide by the IPL laws," he concluded.

Shoaib's five-year ban upheld

Shoaib Akhtar's international future was left dangling in limbo after the appellate tribunal set up to hear his appeal against a five-year ban upheld the ban, but only temporarily, deciding instead to revisit the appeal in June. The decision is given an even stranger hue because it allows Shoaib to play outside Pakistan - the Indian Premier League (IPL) for example - even though the league maintains that he will only be allowed to play if his ban on playing for Pakistan is removed. Justice (retd) Aftab Farrukh, the head of the three-man tribunal, said the main hearing into Shoaib's appeal against the ban would now take place in June and that the ban on playing in or for Pakistan would stay in place until then. "We have seen Shoaib's track record and believe that he has not learnt any lesson. He flouted discipline of the board, he harmed the chairman of the board and fellow cricketers and above all sentiments of the nation," Farrukh said. "We considered every aspect of the decision of the disciplinary committee and think that they banned Akhtar on grounds of indiscipline and there was no victimisation." There had been concerns from day one of the appeals process, particularly because Farrukh had expressed great reluctance in heading the tribunal. Soon after he was appointed, Farrukh told a local TV channel that he didn't have the time to take up this case, a situation seemingly borne out by today's verdict. Meanwhile, Shoaib's position with the IPL remains unclear. While the PCB clarified that he is free to play in the IPL, a league spokesperson told Cricinfo that their position of not allowing him to take part in the tournament "remains the same" as of now. The IPL had decided to bar Shoaib from the tournament in "the interests of international discipline" after the PCB's initial decision to hand him a ban. Meanwhile, a spokesperson from Kolkata Knight Riders, the team that bought Shoaib for US$425,000, said they will abide by the IPL stand. To further muddy matters, Shoaib's lawyers have said they will push for a hearing date earlier than June if the IPL doesn't let him play. "After this interim order we hope that the IPL will allow Akhtar to play in the IPL but if they don't we will press for an early hearing of the appeal than the set date of June," Abid Hasan Minto told reporters. With both international cricket and the IPL ruled out, one option for Shoaib would have been the Indian Cricket League. The unofficial league does not fall under the Indian board - and has an all- Pakistan team in its Twenty20 tournament. However, its business head, Himanshu Mody, confirmed to Cricinfo that the ICL was not in talks with Shoaib. The tribunal's decision comes just a day after Shoaib apologised to the PCB chairman, Nasim Ashraf, in the second of three hearings. On April 1 the board banned Shoaib from playing cricket, for and in Pakistan, for violating the players' code of conduct by publicly criticising the PCB and various policies. Shoaib filed an appeal against the ban claiming that he was being "victimised" and then went on a media rampgage in which he accused the board chairman of various financial wrongdoings. Shoaib's ban took into account that he was already on two years' probation for hitting Mohammad Asif with a bat before the start of the World Twenty20 in South Africa in 2007. That offence saw him fined 3.4 million rupees ($52,000 dollars) and banned for 13 matches.