PCB unperturbed by WADA threat

Pakistan Cricket Board Chairman Nasim Ashraf said that as far as Pakistan is concerned the issue is now closed.

Pakistan Cricket Board on Saturday remained unperturbed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) threatening to haul up PCB for revoking the ban on Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif for positive drug tests.

HT Image

Pakistan Cricket Board Chairman Nasim Ashraf told reporters that as far as Pakistan was concerned the issue was now closed.

"I don't want to make any comments on this latest WADA statement. But for us it is a closed chapter," he stated.

WADA Chairman Dick Pound has been quoted by the BBC as saying that it would be challenging the decision of an appeals panel of the PCB to lift the doping bans on the two fast bowlers.

Pound had said in his interview that WADA will contest the decision on the basis that the International Cricket Council was a signatory to the anti-doping code and Pakistan, as one of its full members, should therefore be subject to its provisions.

"The two players tested positive. They have not even asked for the B samples to be analysed, so they accept the result (of the initial tests) and the Pakistan Cricket Board simply did not apply the code," Pound said.

Ashraf had three days back also said at the a press conference that the doping case was an internal issue for Pakistan and legally the anti-doping regulations of WADA or ICC didn't apply to it.

Senior PCB officials in recent days have also consulted its panel of lawyers as apparently they are expecting a challenge from WADA.

Pound has also said that it would ask the CAS to handle the case in the fast track as it wants a decision before the World Cup being held in March-April.

He also hit out at the ICC for not being decisive on the doping issue.

"The ICC doesn't seem to be entirely clear which way it wants to go, so rather than wait and possibly have the thing fall between stools, we're going to exercise our responsibility under the code - we do not think the proper result has been achieved to date," he said in the interview.

He continued: "If we are successful in this, I think it will be a matter of considerable embarrassment to the ICC that it did not act."

Pound said Pakistan had not properly applied sanctions that are meant to be applied in such cases.

"You cannot have in an anti-doping system an individual national federation purporting to act without regard to the rules of the international federation which has adopted the code."