Shoaib, Asif recalled after positive steroid tests

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan recalled fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif from the Champions Trophy on Monday after they tested positive for the banned steroid nandrolone.In the latest controversy to engulf Pakistani cricket, the team’s best new ball pairing face bans of up to two years each for allegedly using the performance-enhancing drug.
Akhtar and Asif arrived in Lahore but gave no statement to reporters at the airport. They had been asked to return home on the first flight while Pakistan prepared to face Sri Lanka in their opening Champions Trophy match in Jaipur on Tuesday without them.
The 31-year-old Akhtar, who was looking forward to a comeback after a long injury layoff, earlier protested his innocence and said he was “gutted” to miss the tournament.
“I cannot say much at this time about what has happened but I just want to assure everyone that I am innocent of doing anything I shouldn’t have,” he said in his diary on the Bigstarcricket.com website.
“All I can say is that I have not knowingly taken any performance-enhancing drugs and would never cheat my team-mates or opponents in this way,” he said.
Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chairman Nasim Ashraf told a news conference that the board carried out tests on 25 players and that the two positive results had now been reconfirmed by a Malaysian laboratory. The board had suspended the two players with immediate effect and withdrawn them from the Champions Trophy, Ashraf added. Pakistan had no system for doping offences but will set up a tribunal to decide how to punish Akhtar and Asif if their test results were confirmed, Ashraf said. “The International Cricket Council has a ban of two years for the first offence but we will go step by step, form a committee which will look into the evidence,” PCB Director of Operations Salim Altaf told reporters. “We don’t want to end the careers of Shoaib and Asif. We will do a complete investigation and then decide the matter,” he said.Pakistan deserved credit for immediately revealing the positive test results on two of its key players, the PCB’s Ashraf said.
“We did not cover it up... We don’t care about losing or winning. We need to educate the players because this is a very serious offence,” he said. The PCB said all-rounder Yasir Arafat and left-arm spinner Abdul Rahman had been finalised as replacements.
Stunned Pakistani coach Bob Woolmer said he would “take responsibility” for the setback.“What was my initial reaction? Disappointment,” the English-born Woolmer told a press conference in Jaipur.“I have never come across anything like this in my life.... The timing is not great, but if it is going to happen it happens.”
The steroid claims cap two months of controversy swirling around the squad.The chaos started in the fourth Test against England at the Oval in August, when Captain Inzamamul Haq refused to take his team back on the field after it was accused of ball-tampering. Inzamam was cleared of that charge but was still handed a four-match ban for bringing the game into disrepute. His replacement Younis earlier this month refused to lead the side for the Champions Trophy, saying he did not want to be a ‘dummy’ captain.
Then-PCB chief Shaharyar Khan quit the next day because of his decision. Khan’s replacement Ashraf reinstated Younis as skipper.
Former Pakistani skipper Rashid Latif told media the positive tests were “a most serious crisis, but it is a bold decision by the PCB”.