Re: Asif and Shoaib to appeal / Decision tomorrow, 5 December 2006
Pakistan duo win drugs ban appeal
Shoaib and Asif both blamed contaminated supplements
Pakistan fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif have had their bans for doping overturned.
The pair were cleared by a three-man appeals committee of the Pakistan Cricket Board in Karachi.
A tribunal banned Shoaib, 31, for two years and Asif, 23, for one year on 1 November for testing positive for the banned steroid nandrolone.
Both insisted they did not knowingly take the drug, claiming it was present in supplements they had taken.
The appeals committee, headed by retired judge Fakhruddin Ibrahim, accepted their defence after carrying out its own investigations.
Ibrahim said: "The committe holds that Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif will not be deemed to have committed a doping offence.
“The ban and punishment imposed by the earlier tribunal is hereby set aside as being contrary to the provision of laws.”
Akhtar and Asif were recalled from the Champions Trophy in India in October after they tested positive in out-of-competition tests conducted by the PCB. Pakistan’s selectors must now decide whether either man is ready to return to action in the ongoing one-day series against the West Indies.