Jadeja may go to court if BCCI turns down appeal

Ajay Jadeja, who has been banned from playing cricket for five years, has said he will approach the court in case his appeal to the Indian Cricket Board was rejected.

"The day my appeal is turned down, I will definitely go to court and fight my case," Jadeja told Rajat Sharma's Janata Ki Adalat programme on Star TV on Sunday.

The Indian Cricket Board, while handing out life bans to Mohd Azharuddin and Ajay Sharma, and five-year bans on Jadeja and Manoj Prabhakar after being indicted by its Anti-Corruption Commissioner K Madhavan in the match-fixing scandal, had allowed them to appeal before it against their punishment.

Jadeja said the CBI had not registered any case in court. "If they had done so, we would have got an opportunity to defend. It went to the BCCI, who have made a code of conduct of their own and now they have announced a punishment and have given us a final chance to appeal," he said.

On charges that he used political connections, he said he was punished only because "the media highlighted my political connections."

Jadeja claimed that Azharuddin told him during the disciplinary committee (of the BCCI) hearings that he had never said before CBI that he (Jadeja) and Nayan Mongia had helped him fix matches.

Jadeja said he did not know Kishen Kumar (of T-Series) and had never spoken to him during matches but admitted to being acquainted with Rajesh Kalra and Rattan Mehta, (both named in CBI report as bookies), who he said visited the same health club and restaurants as him. Jadeja said he had clarified this in writing to Madhavan.

About calls on his cell-phone from another alleged bookie Uttamchand `Topi', Jadeja said he had decided Uttamchand was a man to be avoided after he started calling him too often.

The 29-year-old former Indian captain said he owned no illegal property and all his assets were acquired through honest means. "Do you think we should not earn money?" he questioned.