Islamabad, Sep 4 (IANS) Former cricket captain Imran Khan believes that the Pakistani High Commissioner to Britain Wajid Shamsul Hassan had made a premature statement of calling Salman Butt, Muhammad Asif and Muhammad Aamer, currently under probe for spot-fixing in England, as innocent.
In a television interview here Saturday, Imran said the allegations against these players could be career-threatening, if proven guilty.
‘The libel laws in England are such that anybody making such allegations could be in for a hard grind if he was unable to prove the accusations,’ he said while recollecting his own legal battle with Ian Botham on ball-tempering charges in 1992.
Hoping that the allegations would prove false, he said: ‘There will always be an apprehension about the validity of cricket matches anywhere in the world otherwise.’
‘It is difficult to prove spot-fixing because it does not have any bearing on the result of any fixture,’ he believed, adding that it will be hard to press criminal charges against three tainted cricketers.
Imran said he had advised the PCB (Pakistan Cricket Board) to get to the root-cause of the menace when the match-fixing allegations first surfaced in 1993.
‘I assume that they did not go all the way with the investigation because it could threaten their own positions,’ he said, adding that he would have given exemplary punishments to culprits if he was the chairman of PCB.
‘In my career, I used to hear about match-fixing but nobody ever approached me,’ he said, adding he told the players that not only would their careers end but they will also be jailed, when it came to his knowledge in 1989 in Sharjah that four players of the Pakistani team had taken money from the bookies. ‘We won that final match easily,’ he said.
Imran opined that the trial in the courts in England would be fair because nobody could influence the proceedings there.
‘Everything will depend on the Scotland Yard investigation,’ he said adding that the prosecution had to prove that ‘no-balls were bowled deliberately after taking bribe’.
‘It would have been nice if these players had withdrawn from the squad voluntarily,’ he said regretting that cricket had started reflecting the ills plaguing the society.
‘When these boys see somebody in a prominent position involving in corrupt practices, they tend to think that crime pays,’ he noted.
‘I don’t believe that these players were set-up in the sting operations because they should have the ability to make the distinction between right and wrong,’ he pointed out. ‘If these allegations prove, it will be very damaging for cricket in Pakistan and the fans will also lose interest in the game,’ he feared.
Imran criticised the cricket structure in the country where the President of Pakistan appoints the chairman of the cricket board.
‘We are trying to survive on only the sheer talent of players like Aamer but the system will always face problems if the PCB was not run professionally by elected people,’ he emphasized.
