PCB launches corruption education drive

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has launched a programme aimed at educating its cricketers and officials to stay clear of corruption in the game and maintaining appropriate standards of conduct on and off the field.

"We have held lectures for all the regional teams including coaches who are part of the domestic structure and also for the national under-19 and A team players and support staff," former wicketkeeper Wasim Bari, who heads the programme, told Reuters.

The participants were given lectures on the ICC's anti-corruption code and the PCB code of conduct. "We are also telling them how to behave in a dressing room, how to interact with strangers and outsiders and how to avoid getting lured into corrupt practices," Bari said. "We are preparing them for international cricket."

Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, who are currently serving minimum five-year bans from the ICC's anti-corruption tribunal for their role in a spot-fixing scandal during last year's tour to England, were not allowed to take part in the programme. One of the steps for their rehabilitation in the verdicts was their involvement in such programmes.

"Since they have appealed against their bans the matter is technically sub-judice," said Bari. "So we can't involve them at the moment."

Lectures were delivered in Urdu and a manual based on the ICC anti-corruption code and the PCB's own code of conduct in Urdu was also distributed. The PCB also plans to hire foreign experts to give future lectures.

On Wednesday the PCB also introduced stricter regulations for agents wishing to represent their players commercially, a consequence of the alleged misdeeds of player-agent Mazhar Majeed in the scandal that saw Asif, Amir and Butt punished.

The developments are part of initiatives recommended to the board by the ICC's task force on Pakistan. Last October, in the immediate aftermath of the spot-fixing scandal, a concerned ICC had recommended a series of remedial measures for the PCB to implement in an effort to clean up the game in Pakistan.

The task force, headed by ECB chairman Giles Clarke, was deputed to work with the PCB in the implementation.