Miandad expressed suspicion: witness

A cricket correspondent has confirmed to Justice Karamat Bhandari that former coach Javed Miandad had expressed suspicion prior to the World Cup that Pakistan would lose league matches to either Scotland or Bangladesh.

A lady correspondent of a national daily has made the revelations in an affidavit, a copy of which was exclusively acquired by Dawn.

The correspondent had been asked to testify in the background that she was the first reporter who had claimed that Pakistan would lose a World Cup match to either Scotland or Bangladesh.

Justice Karamat Bhandari is investigating allegations that Pakistan deliberately threw matches to Bangladesh and India.

Proceedings were held in-camera by the one-man judicial commission of Justice Karamat Nazir Bhandari probing into the match-fixing allegations against Pakistan for losing two World Cup-1999 matches, deliberately, one against Bangladesh and the other against India.

Two former Test cricketers, Basit Ali and Aamir Sohail who were summoned by the commission to record their statement did not attend the proceedings because the summons could not be delivered to them.

Justice Karamat Nazir Bhandari called three persons including Pakistan Cricket Board's lawyer Hyder Asghar, former Test cricketer Abdul Qadir who is assisting the commission and a former international player Saleem Pervez to his chambers and held in-camera proceedings for a half hour.

A letter from Karachi-based lady journalistwas received by the commission as she could not appear before the commission due to domestic reasons.

In her letter, the lady journalist said that the match against Bangladesh was fixed and the cricket legend Javed Miandad had told her about the result of the match. She said that a colleague also quoted Miandad's allegation in his story.

She said that in fact, the Pakistani players by losing to Bangladesh tried to compensate the bookies who had suffered heavy losses when Pakistan lost to England in Sharjah Cup held months before the World Cup.

After the Sharjah Cup, the letter added, Miandad was sacked as coach because he had developed difference with the team members on match-fixing. Miandad and Moin Khan also exchanged hot words, the contents of the letter revealed.

Saleem Pervez who played an one-day match against West Indies in 1980, repeated his statement which he had already submitted before Justice Malik Mohammad Qayyum.

He alleged that one Aftab Butt had given $ 1,00,000 to some Pakistani players for losing triangular series match in Australia against Sri Lanka. However, he said that he had no information about the World Cup-1999 matches.

The commission ordered to again serve summons to Sohail and Basit. The commission has also agreed in principle to sent the registrar Kazim Ali Malik to Karachi to record the statements of two journalists there.

A PCB representative in England Ihsan Mani again failed to reach Pakistan from England to record his statement. His lawyer Raza Kazam, however, explained to the commission about non presence of his client.

The next date is fixed for Dec 15.