Daily Times

LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board’s (PCB) legal dispute with former opener Nasir Jamshed is set to go to an anti-corruption tribunal after the batsman challenged all charges against him. In February, the PCB had charged Jamshed for five breaches of their anti-corruption code. Those charges were issued five days before Jamshed’s one-year ban, for non-cooperation with the PCB’s spot-fixing investigation during PSL 2017, ended on Feb 13. Following Jamshed’s stance, the PCB issued a press statement on Thursday, saying the board chairman Najam Sethi had referred the matter for adjudication to a three-member anti-corruption tribunal, which comprises Justice (retired) Fazl-e-Miran Chauhan, Shahzaib Masood and former Pakistan paceman Aaqib Javed. According to officials involved with the case, the PCB had acted after the emergence of fresh evidence, centering around alleged meetings in the UK prior to last season’s PSL.

The board has, over the past year, claimed to have had overwhelming evidence against Jamshed. The PCB has also been waiting for the National Cricket Agency (NCA) to share its evidence, which has not happened yet. However, an NCA official did appear as a witness via video link in one of the PCB’s tribunal hearings. At least one part of the evidence against Jamshed is a collection of WhatsApp voice recordings allegedly between Jamshed and others also implicated in the case; these recordings were leaked to the media. Jamshed has all along denied any wrongdoing and has, in fact, threatened to take the PCB to court for maligning his name. Jamshed is based in Birmingham and has been communicating with the PCB through his Lahore-based lawyer, and has appeared before the PCB tribunal via video link. Former Islamabad United opener Sharjeel Khan and Khalid Latif received five-year bans for their part in the scandal, whereas Karachi Kings opener Shahzaib Hasan was handed a one-year ban in the PSL scandal.

Published in Daily Times, April 7^th 2018.