We must go after the corrupt and not cricket: Pak senator

Karachi: Cricket must not suffer because of corruption, said Pakistan’s Senate Standing Committee on sports member Tahir Mashadi as he urged the PCB to let the team’s tour of England go on despite the embarrassment caused by the ‘spot-fixing’ scandal. “My personal thing is that we should go after the corrupt and corruption. We should not go after cricket, it must go on,” said Mashadi. Mashadi said PCB chief Ijaz Butt is under the scanner of the Pakistan parliament which is keeping a close watch on the affairs of the cricket board. “Something is wrong in the PCB, definitely. It needs to be right, especially its chairman and people at the helm of affairs at the moment,” Mashadi said.Three Pakistani players – Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamir – have been implicated in the scandal which has grown in proportion after former opener Yasir Hameed’s claim that his teammates were involved in fixing “almost every match”. “Nothing should be done to spare those who are found guilty,” Mashadi told a news channel.Even as the fate of the two Twenty20 matches and the ODI series between England and Pakistan hung in balance, Mashadi said that he is waiting for the Scotland Yard to finish its investigation as quickly as possible. The suspension imposed on the three accused players by the ICC has not gone down well with some PCB officials, and Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Britain, has blamed it on ICC president Sharad Pawar. “I think it’s very unfortunate, I don’t think these sort of allegations should be made. Politics should take place in political arena, diplomacy in diplomatic and cricket in cricket arena,” he said. PTI