Senior forced teammates to take oath to oppose Younus?

By: Bipin Dani | March 12, 2010 |
MUMBAI Betting and match-fixing were the biggest crimes in the game of cricket, and yet the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) made Justice Qayyums report public in the year 2000.
However, the fact-finding report for the Pakistan teams poor performance in Australia tour will not be made public.
Explaining the reasons, the PCBs legal advisor Taffazul Rizvi said: What we exercised now was not a public inquiry. It was an in-house inquiry and therefore the PCB is not bound to make its findings public.
I was not a legal advisor when Qayyums finding were made known to the public, he said.
It emerged from the evaluation committee meeting that a particular group of senior players didnt want Younus Khan as their skipper (last year) and had even forced some other team members to take an oath on the Holy Quran during the last years Champions Trophy in South Africa that they would not support Younus as their captain and would not cooperate with him.
They even complained to the PCB chief when Younus was leading the side. Younus stepped down and asked to be rested on realising the big group was asking for his head.
The poor performance of the team was due to the culture of groupism in the team and the same was brought to the notice of the evaluation committee, it was learnt.
Interestingly, the evaluation committees findings have not yet been handed over to the punished players. It is upto the PCB to decide whether the same can be handed over to the players but the punished players are aware of what they did, the Supreme Court advocate said.
The PCB is in no mood to pardon the punished players though they have every right to appeal. Appealing is their fundamental right and we cant take it away, Rizvi said.

This news was published in print paper. Access complete paper of this day.

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