MUMBAI, 8 December 2006 — In what can only be described as most welcome turnaround for the sake of the Pakistani cricket team, two of their leading fast bowlers, Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Asif, have been completely exonerated of the charges of drug abuse and are immediately free to play international cricket again.
Both had been banned by their own Board, just on the eve of Pakistan’s opening match of the ICC Champions Trophy in October last. They had been found positive for the use of nandrolone, a banned substance, by a World Anti Doping Association (WADA) laboratory in Malaysia, last September at the instance of the Pakistan Cricket Board. The charges against the two bowlers and the ban were announced in a dramatic manner just before the team’s first match in India. It was done, perhaps, to pre-empt a similar action by the ICC, which had made random dope tests mandatory from the 1999 World Cup.-Akhtar was banned for two years and his junior teammate, Asif, for a year by the PCB.
Both had to leave India post-haste. Once in Pakistan, they appeared before an inquiry committee and an anti-doping tribunal, which confirmed the ban. Both players went in appeal.
The three-member panel, comprising Justice Fakhruddin Ebrahim, former cricketer Haseeb Ahsan and Dr Danish Zaheer, the president of the Pakistan Sports Medicine Federation, which heard the appeal, cleared them of the charges on “ technical grounds.”
The PCB thus lifted the ban on both the players, who will now boost the strength of the team for the World Cup. Whether they will be included in the squad to tour South Africa is not known yet..-This decision has come as a complete bolt from the blue.
It is just a coincidence that the lifting of the ban comes a day after Pakistan president General Musharraf, who is also the patron-in-chief of Pakistan Cricket Board, had told his team, in no unequivocal terms, that he wanted them to win the World Cup.
Both players, especially Asif, who had a great last season and was one of the nominees for the emerging player of the year award of the ICC, had gone through a most agonizing phase of their careers. It is to be seen how the International Cricket Council and the rest of the cricketing world react to this latest development.
It speaks volumes for the amount of talent that Pakistan have particularly in the pace-bowling department.
That they should win the Test series 2-0 against the West Indies, without their main strike force of Akhtar and Asif, is proof of their bench strength. The absence of their original spearhead gave the likes of Umar Gul and Shahid Nazir an opportunity to show their worth.
The only problem that the side led by Inzanmam-ul-Haq may now face is who to leave out from the cluster of some fine pacers.
