Shoaib Akhtar insisted he was dropped from Pakistan’s World Cup team due to injury and not because he had flunked a private dope test in London.
KARACHI: Controversial Pakistani speedster Shoaib Akhtar insisted he was dropped from Pakistan’s World Cup team due to injury and not because he had flunked a private dope test in London.
Shoaib and his new ball partner Mohammad Asif were ruled out of the World Cup on the day the Pakistan squad was due to fly to the West Indies for the tournament.
The Pakistan Cricket Board said they had fitness problems but speculations have persisted that both had failed private dope tests for which they had gone to London.
Shoaib, however, vehemently denied the allegations.
“I was dropped from the team because of my injury. We underwent no private dope tests,” Shoaib insisted. Both Shoaib and Asif had tested positive for Nandrolone last year in October, which saw them being sent back from the ICC Champions Trophy in India. Initially they were banned by a drugs inquiry tribunal for two and one year respectively, but an appellate committee later upheld their appeals against the bans.
Both were subsequently picked for the World Cup despite doubts over their clearing dope tests as traces of nandrolone remains in an athletes’ body for up to six months. Speculations were rife again that both were dropped after failing the private dope tests as the International Cricket Council had made it clear they would be tested as soon as they landed in the Caribbean.
Shoaib, who is training under Mudassar Nazar, the chief coach at the National Cricket Academy in Lahore, said that he had given himself four months to recover from a knee injury.
“I have a great equation with Mudassar who has worked with me before and understands me as a person and bowler. I have given myself four months to get back into action probably in the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa,” Shoaib said. “After the disappointment of not being there for the team in the World Cup, my main target now is to be fighting fit for our tour of India in November this year. I missed the last tour there in 2005 because of fitness problems. I want to play in India and deliver something,” he said.
The enigmatic bowler also said that he had mellowed down and matured as a person. “I am learning to be a little more diplomatic and I have grown up. The anger is there now only for when I am bowling. Because that what drives you to bowl fast,” he said.
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