Daily Times

LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board’s (PCB) Code of Conduct for the 2018 Pakistan Super League went into effect on Thursday with the start of the league’s third edition in Dubai. A series of restrictions have been placed on both the cricketers and their franchises in order to avoid a repeat of the infamous spot-fixing scandal that rocked the PSL last year. The PCB has provided all the players with new sim cards, with their telephonic data to be recorded and monitored by the PCB’s anti-corruption unit. The players, until the tournament ends, are no longer allowed to go on personal trips and can only travel with their teams. Any meetings with guests will also have to take place in the hotel lobby where the teams are staying. The franchise owners, meanwhile, will neither have access to players’ rooms nor will they be allowed to have rooms on the same hotel floors as the players. The PCB has beefed up its code of conduct even more this year so as to avoid another episode like last year’s when Sharjeel Khan, Khalid Latif and others were lured into a spot-fixing scandal by bookmakers. The scandal saw both Sharjeel and Latif banned from cricket for multiple years.

Published in Daily Times, February 23^rd 2018.