Asif Afridi is back in action for Pakistan in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy despite the PCB’s February announcement that he had been suspended for two years for violations of the anti-corruption code, with a backdate of September 12, 2022. A few days after his suspension began on September 16 and after more than a year, he played his first game.
This does not, however, violate the terms of his ban because the PCB erred when it announced his ban for crimes including corruption. According to a document obtained by ESPNcricinfo, the penalty was for “a two-year period of ineligibility,” “half of which will be suspended.”
However, when the PCB publicized the punishment on their official website and social media sites, they omitted any reference of the sentence’s suspension and merely stated that he had been barred from playing cricket for two years in any capacity. The statement also includes a quotation from the former PCB chairman Najam Sethi, who said that suspending an international cricketer for two years “gives the PCB no joy.”
The PCB acknowledged that the formal notice of Afridi’s suspension made earlier this year contained this inaccuracy, according to ESPNcricinfo. Since then, it has never been formally or publicly rectified, and when Afridi began his comeback last month, the board made no statement.
Due to two transgressions of the PCB’s anti-corruption code, Afridi was suspended. The more serious code infringement was a violation of Article 2.4.10, which prohibits “directly or indirectly soliciting, inducing, enticing, persuading, encouraging or intentionally facilitating any participant to breach any of the foregoing provisions of this Article 2.4.” This crime’s exact nature has not been made public.
Afridi, 36, had a middling tournament debut for FATA after his return, claiming two wickets in his first three games. But in his most recent encounter, he defeated Faisalabad by taking seven wickets across two innings.
