Zulqarnain Haider - Pak Wicket Keeper Quits International Cricket

Pakistan wicketkeeper Zulqarnain Haider announced his retirement from international cricket on Tuesday, and said he plans to seek political asylum in Britain after fleeing the team amid alleged threats for defying a match-fixing conspiracy.

Haider arrived in London on Monday and in an interview broadcast by a private television channel on Tuesday, said he had discussed his status with immigration officials and “according to their rules, I will have to follow this procedure.”

“I understand there is rule in Britain that if you are on right and if you are not a criminal, then they always protect you,” Haider said.

Haider would not identify who threatened him or the nature of the threats that prompted him to flee the team hotel in Dubai and fly out to England without telling anyone.

“I was approached by one person who asked me to fix the fourth and fifth match and there would be problem for me if I did not do it,” Haider said.

“I do not want to say who is involved and who is not involved in the match fixing.”

The alleged threats came after he scored the winning run in the fourth one-day international against South Africa on Friday to clinch a one-wicket victory for Pakistan, thereby foiling an alleged plan to allow South Africa to win the game.

“The country is like a mother and any one who sells it cannot get anything in life,” Haider said.

“I did not want to sell my mother, I did not want to sell my country and I did what I thought was better.”

Following the game, Haider asked a Pakistan Cricket Board official for his passport, pretending that he needed it to buy a mobile phone connection, and then left the hotel to fly to London.

“I did not do what I was asked to do in the fourth one-dayer and I also did not let it happen what was being asked to do, so this is the reason that I left it and came here and I did what I felt better,” he said.

Haider would not detail the threats made to him, but Pakistan police had beefed up security at his house in Lahore, according to senior police official Sahahzada Salim, “to avoid any untoward incident.”

“I cannot say what kind of threats I have received as my family is still in Pakistan,” Haider said, adding his reluctance to provide details was in the interests of family safety.

Haider said he was new in Pakistan cricket and did not have enough money to hire a lawyer to represent him in the immigration case or any future legal disputes. He said he would approach some of his friends in London as he seeks a place to stay.

The alleged threats and match fixing were the latest setback for a Pakistan team that has been troubled by matters off the pitch.

In August, Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif were accused of involvement in an alleged betting scandal during a test in England.

The ICC described the allegations against the trio as the sport’s biggest fixing scandal in decades. It charged the trio with corruption in September and suspended them after a British tabloid sting alleged money was paid for bowling no-balls at prearranged times against England to fix spot-betting markets.

On Sunday, Pakistan’s team manager Intikhab Alam told The Associated that Haider and two other players had been fined for breaking curfew during the team’s series with South Africa.

Alam said opener Shahzaib Hasan, spinner Abdul Rehman and Haider were fined 500 dirhams ($136) for staying out late in Abu Dhabi, where the series began last month. Alam had said Sunday that all three would be available to play Monday.

Three Accused Pakistani Cricketers Return Home Today

Three Pakistan cricket players questioned by British police over claims they were involved in a fixing scandal will return home on Friday, the London legal firm representing them said. 
"The Metropolitan Police has been notified that Mohammad Aamer, Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt will return to Pakistan later this morning," said a statement from Addleshaw Goddard. 
Police had questioned Test team captain Butt and bowlers Aamer and Asif over claims in the News of The World newspaper that they took money to deliberately bowl no-balls in a Test match against England at Lord's last month. 
The players, who have denied wrongdoing, were released without charge after being quizzed at a London police station on September 3. 
Despite their return to Pakistan, the lawyers' statement said the cricketers "remain available to co-operate fully with the police investigation and have each given undertakings to return to the UK if required to do so." 
"The players are looking forward to being reunited with their families," it said. 
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police in London confirmed it was aware that the trio were leaving Britain and said the players had promised "through their solicitor to return to assist the Metropolitan Police Service inquiry in due course."

'Spot Fixing' - Big Threat to Cricket World

'Spot-fixing' has emerged as the latest threat to the integrity of cricket after the match-fixing scandal which rocked the game 10 years ago.

British police arrested a 35-year-old man on Saturday on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud bookmakers after a newspaper report that Pakistan pace bowlers Mohammad Aamir and Mohammad Asif had bowled three deliberate no-balls in the fourth Test against England at Lord's.

WHAT IS 'SPOT-FIXING'?

'Spot-fixing' involves a player agreeing to perform to order by pre-arrangement. For example, a bowler might deliberately bowl consecutive wides in his second over or a batsman could make sure he does not reach double figures.

Twenty20 cricket is particularly susceptible because so much happens so quickly that individual performances can soon be forgotten or dismissed as inconsequential.

Tim May, the chief executive of the international players' union FICA, is one of several influential figures in the game who believes that the number of Twenty20 matches now being played could tempt players to take money from bookmakers in return for 'spot-fixing'.

WHO BENEFITS?

Betting on cricket matches televised in the Indian sub-continent is a hugely lucrative business. Fortunes can be made if a gambler knows in advance what a particular bowler or batsman is going to do. Bets can be placed on every delivery.

Only betting on horse racing at trackside is allowed in India but in practice around half of a market worth billions of dollars is estimated to be illegal betting, mostly on cricket.

WHAT EVIDENCE IS THERE OF 'SPOT-FIXING'?

Rumours have abounded since the advent of the Indian Premier League (IPL) two years ago although nobody has ever been charged. During last year's Ashes tour of England an Australian player reported that he had been approached by a suspected illegal bookmaker in the team's London hotel.

Former England captain Michael Atherton said in a newspaper column earlier this year that one leading former international had told him "categorically" that 'spot-fixing' was a regular occurrence.

Former Pakistan captain Rashid Latif told Reuters this year that he knew of match-fixing in the now defunct Indian Cricket League.

WHAT WAS THE MATCH-FIXING SCANDAL?

Three international captains Hansie Cronje (South Africa), Salim Malik (Pakistan) and Mohammed Azharuddin (India) were banned for life in 2000 for helping to influence the results of matches.

Match-fixing had become established in One-day Cricket in the 1990s and suspicion centred, in particular, on the one-day tournaments staged at Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.

As a result of the scandal the International Cricket Council (ICC) founded its Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) to monitor all international matches. The ACSU monitored the IPL tournament in India this year but not the second edition in South Africa last year because the Indian board thought the fee charged by the ICC was too high.

Passenger Plane Crash with 152 People In Pakistan

A passenger jet carrying 152 people crashed into the hills surrounding Pakistan's capital amid rain Wednesday, officials said. At least five people were killed and five wounded, but many more were feared dead.

The cause of the Airblue crash was not immediately clear, said Pervez George, a civil aviation official. He said the plane had left the southern city of Karachi at 7:45 a.m. for a two-hour scheduled flight to Islamabad and was trying to land during difficult weather. Airblue is a private service based in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city.

"The plane was about to land at the Islamabad airport when it lost contact with the control tower, and later we learned that the plane had crashed," George said, adding that the model of the plane was Airbus 321 and the flight number was ED202.

Guards with the forestry service said they had found some wreckage and seen at least five dead bodies, said Imtiaz Inayat Ali, an official with Islamabad's Capital Development Authority. Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik said at least five wounded passengers had been rescued.

Pakistani news channels showed what appeared to be wreckage of the plane as a helicopter hovered above the heavily forested hills to assess the situation. Fire was visible and smoke was blowing up from the scene. The army said it was sending special troops to the area to help out along with helicopters.

At the Islamabad airport, hundreds of friends and relatives of those on board the flight swarmed ticket counters desperately seeking information. A large cluster of people also surrounded the list of passengers on the flight, which was posted near the Airblue ticket counter.

"Nobody is guiding anyone. People are running from one counter to another," said Arshad Mahmood, whose brother, Maulana Nawab Ulhasan, a prayer leader in a town near Islamabad, was on the flight.

"I'm praying for his survival, but I think there is little hope," Mahmood said.

Arshad Ali said his cousin, Raza Ali, was supposed to be on the flight but missed it in Karachi on his way from Canada.

"We are happy he missed the flight, but things here are in shambles at the airport," Ali said. "For God's sake, take care of the worried people, the relatives of those who were on the unfortunate plane. They have no information and are just running here and there."

Saqlain Altaf told Pakistan's ARY news channel that he was on a family outing in the hills when he saw the plane looking unsteady in the air. "The plane had lost balance, and then we saw it going down," he said, adding that he heard the crash.

Officials at first thought it was a small plane, but later revised that. George said 146 passengers were on the flight along with six crew members.

Raheel Ahmed, a spokesman for the airline, said an investigation would be launched, but that for now the focus was to find survivors. The plane was no more than eight years old, and it had no known technical issues, Ahmed said. He added that to his knowledge, the pilots had not sent any emergency signals.

Airblue flies within Pakistan as well as internationally to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and the United Kingdom.

The only previous recorded accident for Airblue, a carrier that began flying in 2004, was a tailstrike in May 2008 at Quetta airport by one of the airline's Airbus 321 jets. There were no casualties and damage was minimal, according to the U.S.-based Aviation Safety Network.

The Airbus 320 family of medium-range jets, which includes the 321 model that crashed Wednesday, is one of the most popular in the world, with about 4,000 jets delivered since deliveries began in 1988.

Twenty-one of the aircraft have been lost in accidents since then, according to the Aviation Safety Network's database. The deadliest was a 2007 crash at landing in Sao Paolo by Brazil's TAM airline, in which all 187 people on board perished, along with 12 others on the ground.

The last major plane crash in Pakistan was in July 2006 when a Fokker F-27 twin-engine aircraft operated by Pakistan International Airlines slammed into a wheat field on the outskirts of the central Pakistani city of Multan, killing all 45 people on board.

In August 1989, another PIA Fokker, with 54 people onboard, went down in northern Pakistan on a domestic flight. The plane's wreckage was never found.

In September 1992, a PIA Airbus A300 crashed into a mountain in Nepal, killing all 167 people on board. Investigators found the plane was flying 1,500 feet lower than it reported as it approached the Katmandu airport.