Lahore: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is gearing up for a legal battle against the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), which has demanded an apology as well as a financial compensation over PCB chief Ijaz Butt’s match throwing accusation against the English players.
“The ECB not only wants an unconditional apology from Butt but also financial compensation for its players... The ECB letter states that the PCB should also compensate the ECB for the damages it suffered during the ODI series after Butt’s remarks,” an English daily quoted an official source close to Butt, as saying.
But the source revealed that Butt was in no mood to apologise or pay any compensation to the ECB for alleging that the English players were paid enormous amounts of money to lose the third one-dayer of the series against Pakistan.
Butt said that the PCB would not pay any compensation to the ECB, and told his legal team to respond accordingly, the source added.“The PCB legal team believes that the ECB has no case since Butt never made any direct accusations and they are responding to the ECB letter accordingly,” the source added.
The source also confirmed that Butt has directed his legal counsel to file a legal case against English batsman Jonathan Trott for calling Pakistani pacer Wahab Riaz a ‘fixer’ before the fourth one-dayer at Lord’s.Meanwhile, PCB media manager Nadeem Sarwar has said that there was no question of Butt rendering an apology, as he had not accused the English players of match fixing.
“Everyone should listen carefully to what the chairman said in his interview as he never directly accused anyone of match-fixing,” Sarwar said.
ANI
First Published: Monday, September 27, 2010, 10:40