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Ousted board cheif says players will be next target

The ousted head of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) expects the country's leading players to be the next target in a campaign to find a scapegoat for the World Cup final thrashing last month.

Ex-PCB chairman Khalid Mahmood also said on Saturday he was surprised at the sudden suspension of the board by Pakistan's president Rafiq Tarar on Friday night.

"The feeling in Islamabad is that the final was a no-game. Logically, if the top hierachy believes that the match was deliberately thrown, then the players should be the next target," Mahmood said from Lahore.

"My perception is that the board has been suspended because of match-fixing allegations which are not only unproven but false and baseless.

"I now think it will be the main issue in days to come and some of the frontline players might be made scapegoats to justify the sacking of the board," Mahmood said.

Tarar's suspension of the PCB - he has appointed an ad hoc committee headed by Mujibur Rehman in its place - comes a month after Pakistan lost the World Cup final to Australia at Lord's by eight wickets.

Pakistan were skittled for 132 and Australia knocked off the runs in 20.1 overs in the most one-sided final in the 24-year history of the competition.

It led to accusations of match-fixing by Pakistan fans and local media.

Mahmood said: "The chief of the Ehtesab Bureau (Accountability Bureau) has been levelling accusations against the players. Now his brother is the chairman of the ad hoc committee."

Mujibur Rehman is the younger brother of Saifur Rehman, chief of prime minister Nawaz Sharif's Accountability Bureau which is already looking into allegations that Pakistan deliberately lost the final.

"It should not be difficult to make two and two (equal) four," said Mahmood, who had 17 months left in his term.

The suspension has thrown Pakistani cricket, already reeling from the overwhelming World Cup final defeat and allegations of corruption, into disarray.

Pakistan's cricketers are awaiting a report of an official inquiry into match-fixing allegations. No date has been set for the release of the much-delayed report.

It is the second time this decade the country's cricket board has been suspended. The first was in January 1994 after a change in governments.

"My apprehension that certain elements were deliberately maligning the team and engineering a campaign against the board is proven by the suspension decision," Mahmood added.

Former and current Test players declined to comment, but one dismissed board member told a local newspaper the suspension was political.

"This is all politics and nothing else. If they don't want Pakistan cricket to improve and prosper, what can we do. It doesn't matter to us," Nusrat Azeem, who was also dismissed as president of the Karachi Cricket Association, told The News.

UNI