Abdul Qadir

Karachi: The ghost of match-fixing has come back to haunt Pakistan cricket, feels former chief selector Abdul Qadir, who suspects that some players might be involved in it considering the “strange” manner in which the team lost the Test and ODI series in Sri Lanka.

Pakistan lost the Test series 0-2 and are trailing 0-3 in the five-match ODI series. Qadir, one of the greatest leg-spinners of his era, told a newspaper Tuesday that he suspected something fishy in the way team have lost.

“Look I don’t buy the fact that the very team that just five weeks ago won the Twenty20 World Cup is performing so badly that it is virtually losing every match in Sri Lanka. This has been one of our worst tours to Sri Lanka,” Qadir said.

“After following this series I suspect some players could be involved in match fixing and if a high level inquiry committee is formed everything will become crystal clear,” he added.

He said cricket had not become so unpredictable that a team that won the World Cup would perform so poorly.

“It is strange the way we are losing matches. When the bowling clicks the batsmen don’t perform. When the batsmen perform the bowlers don’t perform. Something is wrong somewhere,” Qadir said.

Former captain and wicket-keeper Rashid Latif, however, criticised the team management for exposing the story. (PTI)