South Asian Business news and information

I have never seen so much uncertainty about the inclusion of two players just before any World Cup Cricket tournament. Pakistani selectors are still not sure whether they are going to have Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif in the Pakistani squad. The official version is that these players are suffering from injury and Pakistani selectors are waiting until the last possible moment.

India Times reported:

Serious doubts remain over whether Shoaib and Asif would be available for the World Cup with both of them twice visiting London in recent weeks to, according to the official version, seek medical opinion about their fitness problems.

But unofficially the word is that both have been to London to seek some fast track treatment and take private dope tests to confirm if there are any traces of the banned substance nandrolone still remaining in their bodies.

Both tested positive for the steroid last October and were subsequently banned and than cleared.

So, serious accusation is there against Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif and Pakistani officials are not saying anything clearly about this matter. This is something that has made Matthew Lawrence Hayden and Andrew Symonds extremely annoyed. They feel that if there was any Australian player involved then the media would have been very harsh on them.

Cricket Zone reported:

Symonds said: "I think everyone knows what our opinion on it is. We've been told to be very tightlipped. But put it this way: imagine if it was one of us. Imagine if it was Matty Hayden or someone else. Imagine what the world would say. I'll leave it at that."

Hayden also said it was the ICC's failure.

"We're all under the same annexe, and that is the ICC. We're all tested equally. So if someone's tested positive for a steroid, then they have to have the penalties of the game. Anything short of that is a failure from our governing body, simple as that.

"The questions should be: what is our governing body doing about this? And what is WADA doing about it? What are the standards and who's imposing them? And who's making decisions based on that?"

I have to admit that the Australians have a strong point here. I wish that ICC officials could come forward and give us some kind of explanation about the whole matter.