Shoaib Akhtar, the former Pakistani paceman, thinks that match-fixing shall be made a criminal offence in Pakistan. He claimed that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) takes such incidents lightly and match-fixing shall be considered as a crime.
Match-fixing and spot-fixing scandals have been the part of Pakistan Cricket recently. Sharjeel Khan, M. Amir, Salman Butt, and Umar Akmal are the notable players who either involved themselves in the match-fixing activities or spoiled their career by involving themselves in unwanted controversies od breaching the code of conduct of the board.
Recently, Umar Akmal has been in the news as he failed to submit the charges against him. According to the policy, a player is supposed to report directly to the board if someone offers him match-fixing. PCB has handed over Umar a ban for thee years and he will not be able to play any form of the game.
“Why cannot you make match-fixing a criminal offence in Pakistan? You can give a jail term or seize the offenders’ property, it will put fear in people, the PCB and their legal team are being incompetent, why there is no legislation to criminalise match-fixing,” Akhtar said in a video posted on his YouTube channel.
“Now there are people who are asking PCB to bring in legislation to criminalise match-fixing. I want to ask those people what did you do when you held positions in the PCB. There is an urgent of bringing such a law and this can only be done in the national assembly,” he added.
Shoaib Akhtar also lashed out at M. Amir who at first retired from Test Cricket just to focus more on shorter formats and leagues. He earlier termed Amir as the person who just wants to earn money rather than serving his homeland. He said that the rules for different players are different and everyone deserves the same punishment. Umar has been banned according to him but Amir was given another chance that is clearly unfair.
“Why did you bring back Mohammad Amir? Why there are different guidelines for different players? You tried to make Amir a star, you bypassed all guidelines, and what did Amir do? He said I won’t play Test cricket, there you go,” Akhtar said in the video.
