PAKISTAN: CRICKET - Press conference by Dr.Nasim Ashraf, Chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board saying Pakistan have sent home fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif from the Champions Trophy tournament in India after the pair tested

Pakistan have sent home fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif from the Champions Trophy in India after the pair tested positive for nandrolone. The players arrived in Lahore from India on Monday (October 16), the eve of the team's opening match against Sri Lanka, after returning positive results for the performance-enhancing steroid. " In accordance with Pakistan Cricket Board's (PCB) anti-doping policy, PCB had arranged to test 19 players prior to the ICC Champions Trophy 2006 from a world anti-doping agency, namely WADA, accreditted laboratory in Malaysia. Two of the Pakistan team players, namely Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif, have tested positive, as per priliminary tests, for Nandrolone which is a form of steroid and is a banned substance," Dr.Nasim Ashraf, the Chairman of the Pakistan cricket Board told a news conference in Islamabad on Monday. "PCB has asked for reconfirmation of the tests from the Malaysian laboratory, and we have been verbally informed 15 minutes ago that the confirmation is also positive," he added. He said the board had set up a committee to investigate the matter. "PCB has decided, therefore, to immediately suspend the two players and has withdrawn them from the Champions Trophy immediately. The players will return back home on the first available flight. ICC has been informed of this decision and discussions are underway with ICC regarding the players' replacement," Ashraf said. He said Pakistan was sending allrounder Yasir Arafat and spinner Abdul Rehman as replacements for fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif. Ashraf agreed with a remark by a reporter that the players "might have had no idea about the drug" and may have taken it by mistake, but insisted that the Board would take a tough action on it. "This is a very serious matter and we will take it up very seriously. This is the first time that our players have been tested positive, so we will take action accordingly," he said. Shoaib and Asif's recall is the biggest doping issue to cloud cricket since Australia spinner Shane Warne was sent home before the World Cup in 2003 and banned for one year for testing positive for a diuretic. Pakistan skipper Younis Khan, talking to reporters in Jaipur, said playing without two important players was going to be "very tough". Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer said the episode, following two months of crises for the Pakistan team, had left him dazed. Ashraf said it was going to be "the biggest setback" to Pakistani cricket, still reeling from a ball-tampering fiasco which caused the team to forfeit the recent fourth test against England at The Oval, controversy over the captaincy and the resignation of board chairman Shaharyar Khan. He said Pakistan had pulled out its main strike bowlers from the Champions Trophy without caring about the consequences on the team's performance. "Obviously it is the biggest setback, because both of them are your strike bowlers, they are your match winners. So unfortunately I think it will be be a big setback to our chances. But the important thing was that we had to do the right thing; and we did the right thing," he said. The Champions Trophy involves all the test-playing nations and is second only to the World Cup in importance.

ITN Source | October 17, 2006

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