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Kaneria to know his fate by January 2012

Pakistan spinner Danish Kaneria will know by the end of January next year whether he will be cleared to play for the national team again, a PCB official said on Saturday.

Lahore: Pakistan spinner Danish Kaneria will know by the end of January next year whether he will be cleared to play for the national team again, a PCB official said on Saturday.
The official, who did not want to be named, told PTI that by end of January next year the trial of Essex player Mervyn Westfield would be completed. "Once the trial is over we will know if the investigating authorities involved Kaneria`s name in the spot-fixing case. If the trial is completed without his name cropping up during the trial than we will know where he stands," he said. The Sindh High Court this week threw out a petition filed by Kaneria against the PCB for refusing to consider him for national selection on basis of him being questioned by the Essex police during a spot-fixing investigation in England last year. Kaneria claims that he has been cleared by the Essex police and the ICC and he is not involved in any spot-fixing case. The court dismissed Kaneria`s petition on the grounds that it was not within its jurisdiction to rule on the petition and the leg-spinner should approach the Lahore high court as the PCB headquarters were based in Lahore or he should appeal in the Supreme Court. Kaneria`s lawyer Faroog Naseem said that he would advice his client to appeal to the Supreme court as he had a strong case against the PCB. A source in the PCB said that there was a feeling in the Board that the SHC dismissed Kaneria`s petition only because of the decision given in the spot-fixing trial involving Salman Butt, Muhammad Asif and Muhammad Aamir by the crown court in London. "There is a feeling that Kaneria has a strong case but the court perhaps didn`t want to take responsibility for any outright decision at a time when the spot-fixing issue is hot," the source said. Kaneria and his Essex teammate Westfield were probed by the Essex police in a spot-fixing case involving a Pro-40 match between Essex and Durham in September 2009 spot-fixing allegations surfaced in the match. The police later cleared Kaneria saying it had found no evidence against him but charged Westfield whose trial began this year. The Test leg-spinner, only the second Hindu to play for Pakistan, has taken 261 Test wickets. But he has not been picked to play for Pakistan since last year when he was stopped in October from boarding a flight to Dubai for a test series against South Africa. The PCB has, however, allowed Kaneria to play domestic cricket in Pakistan. PTI