Someone up there certainly seems to be watching over Pakistani cricket player Mohammed Asif who courts international cricket controversies with remarkable regularity. In spite of repeatedly landing in trouble for use of performance enhancing drugs and once even having been caught with a banned substance in his possession, he continues to evade any real punishment. Either he has some very munificent god father in the PCB who is looking out for him, or he is just very, very lucky.

What has now put squarely in the cricket news limelight the controversial Asif is the request made by the Pakistan Cricket Board to the Indian Premier League Drug Tribunal and the subsequent refusal of the Tribunal to grant the request. In this latest Asif cricket controversy, the PCB requested the Tribunal to revise the ban imposed on Asif ban imposed on Asif after he tested positive for a performance enhancing substance Nandrolone. The PCB wanted that the ban should be preponed, from September 23 to July 15, 2008 so that the extent of the ban would be reduced and would conclude earlier this year, i.e. in July rather than September.

IPL chairman Lalit Modi was quoted in the cricket news as saying, “We have received a request from the PCB to prepone the ban on Asif from September 23 to July 15, 2008. We cannot do so. The ban was imposed by the IPL Drug Tribunal comprising Sunil Gavaskar, Dr. Ravi Bapat and Shirish Gupte."

It is strange that the PCB should approach the tribunal for a revision of the ban’s tenure, when in fact the correct course of action would have been to prefer an appeal against the order of the tribunal. According to Modi, Asif could have appealed against the ban, saying, “He could have appealed against it and then the Appeals Tribunal would have looked into it. He did not do so. The ban stays from September 23, 2008."

According to Modi the September date was taken into account because that was date the IPL passed the suspension order after Asif's second sample had tested positive "We cannot accept the PCB letter to reduce the ban. As far as we are concerned Asif asked for the B sample to be tested and from that date the ban was imposed," Modi said.  He also said that the Indian Premier League had no authority to direct the tribunal to reconsider the decision.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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