Eng players want tainted Pak trio dropped

Agencies

London, 01 September 2010: England players want Pakistan’s tainted trio of Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir to be dropped from the Twenty20 and ODI series so that the remaining tour does not become a "sideshow" to the murky spot-fixing scandal that has rocked world cricket, their players’ association chief executive said.

 

Professional Cricketers’ Association chief executive Angus Porter said England players want the International Cricket Council (ICC) to take decisive action before Sunday’s Twenty20 International at Cardiff. "The England players understand it is important the games go ahead and they will be professional but they would or will find it really difficult to play against the guys directly implicated," Porter said.

 

"Our strong feeling is a way needs to be found to ensure that they are either suspended or, if that is not possible, some other solution is found so that they do not play," he was quoted as saying by Daily Telegraph.

 

"They have not said so but I suspect they are getting frustrated (by the delay) but after the conversations I have had with them, everybody agrees we want to see strong, decisive and appropriate action taken to address this complex issue. We have to take it seriously. There can’t be any fudging," he said.

 

 

Porter did not go as far as to say England team would refuse to take to the field at the Swalec Stadium at Cardiff this weekend if no action was taken but made it clear they felt the game’s credibility was at stake. "I think everybody - the ICC, the ECB and us - believes that to avoid the games becoming a total sideshow, and in some ways they already are, it would be in everybody’s interest if these guys do not play," he said.

 

Pakistan play Somerset in a one-day warm up game on Thursday at Taunton but Asif, Aamir and Butt are likely to miss it as they are being interrogated by the Scotland Yard detectives on Wednesday and later on by ICC’s Anti-corruption and Security Unit.

 

Kamran Akmal, the Pakistan wicketkeeper whose name also figured in the "expose" by British tabloid News of the World, remains part of the squad to face Somerset. Scotland Yard on Tuesday announced that Akmal was no longer a part of their investigation.