Decision on Shoaib expected next week

The disciplinary committee investigating Shoaib Akhtar's spat with Mohammad Asif at the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa last month has completed its work, but will only announce a decision next week.

"We have heard the versions of all the relevant persons and now we will announce the decision within the next week," Shafqat Naghmi, chairman of the board's three-member committee and the board's chief operating officer, said.

Shoaib appeared before the disciplinary committee with his lawyer while Asif, Shahid Afridi and Talat Ali, the team manager, also recorded their statements. "Now there will be no more hearings and we will reach a decision," Naghmi said.

A final decision was expected today, but Naghmi said "supplementary material" provided by Shoaib in the morning would be looked at before the decision was made. He did not expand on the nature of this material.

Shoaib was sent back from Johannesburg soon after the incident, in which he struck Asif with a bat. On his arrival, he held a press conference in which he blamed Afridi for instigating and provoking him into the attack.

Shoaib is facing three separate disciplinary charges as well, including one where is said to have played a charity match in England without permission from the board. The other charges revolve around comments he made to the media in South Africa about the doping scandal.

In August, he was handed a fine of US$5,000 for leaving a training camp in Karachi without informing the team's management. The fine was suspended, but board officials said he will now have to pay the fine because of this latest lapse.

Earlier in the day, a report a report in Dawn, a leading daily, suggested that the spat with Asif was not one of the charges Shoaib was facing.

But a board official clarified that this wasn't the case. "We have to send a show-cause notice first to the concerned party detailing the charges. They then present themselves in front of the committee and answer to the charges. With the Asif incident, the team management had already taken some action and heard Shoaib's version of events in South Africa so that wasn't part of the show-cause notice. But the incident is definitely within the committee's ambit."