Hyderabad, June 13: Terming K Madhavan's report as "inconsistent" and "a bundle of contradictions", former Indian cricket captain Mohammad Azharuddin today said the cricket board had made him a scapegoat in the match-fixing scandal by slapping a life ban on him. Continuing the arguments in the court of second additional chief judge, Azharuddin's counsel P Jagdish said that Madhavan, whose one-man inquiry into match-fixing had resulted in the life ban on Azhar, had approached the issue more with an intention to fix the former captain rather than finding out the truth.

The counsel told the court, which is hearing Azharuddin's petition seeking quashing of the life ban on him, that though the charges were made against Azharuddin, no specific charge memo was served on him so that he could lead evidence that he is clean in the issue.

In the entire issue, the BCCI was carried away by the malafide campaign unleashed against the cricketers and in order to appease the large public opinion, it worked out its make-believe strategy of appointment of some officer to inquire into this allegation and then fix the responsibility on somebody or the other, he said.

The BCCI found Azharuddin as a helpless scapegoat and hence they made him the victim. The BCCI refused to look at the excellent game played by him in the matches, which were alleged to have been fixed, the counsel argued. The arguments would continue on Monday.

Bureau Report