NEWS
Follow UsFormer Pakistan spinner Saeed Ajmal in a controversial statement said that India off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin had been kept out of cricket for a while in order to avoid being banned by the ICC. Ajmal, who has been banned for chucking on multiple occasions, alleges that the ICC engages in favoritism, tilting towards India.
“You changed all these rules and regulations without asking anyone. I was playing cricket for the last eight years. All those rules were for me. That’s it. During that period, Ashwin was out from cricket for six months. Why is that? So you can work on him and your bowler doesn’t get banned. They don’t care if a Pakistan bowler gets banned. They only care about money,” Ajmal told as quoted by Cricwick.
Speaking of Sachin Tendulkar's LBW decision in the 2011 World Cup semi-final in Mohali, Ajmal says that the DRS could be manipulated manually, which is what happened that day.
“The umpire who gave Tendulkar out, he would be ready to give the statement that he got it right. And the meaning is pretty clear. The DRS can be checked manually. You can alter it any stage. I don’t know about that but even if I see it now and any umpire sees that, he will think that this will go on to hit the stumps. But that missed the stumps. Thousands of people have questioned me this, and I don’t know the answer.”
Ajmal made his debut for Pakistan and 2008 and would go on to play 35 Tests, 113 ODIs and 64 T20Is in the next seven years.