Nasir Jamshed, one of two men arrested in Britain, released

A Pakistan Cricket Board official has confirmed that former international batsman Nasir Jamshed and another man were arrested and then released on bail in Britain amid an investigation into alleged spot-fixing in the Pakistan Super League.

“Jamshed and another man, Yusuf, were arrested by the National Crime Agency,” a PCB official told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The PCB official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to comment on the issue.

Britain’s National Crime Authority released an earlier statement saying two men in their 30s had been arrested on Feb 13 and released on bail until April in connection with bribery offences as part of an ongoing investigation into international cricket match spot-fixing.

The PCB has already provisionally suspended Islamabad United’s Sharjeel Khan and Khalid Latif from the domestic Twenty20 tournament because of their alleged involvement in the corruption. Sharjeel and Latif returned to Lahore on Wednesday and faced more interviews with the cricket board’s anti-corruption unit.

Jamshed was suspended Monday from competing in any form of cricket.

A third Islamabad United player is also under investigation and a player from each of the Karachi Kings and Quetta Gladiators franchises were questioned by the PCB’s anti-corruption unit in the United Arab Emirates, where the Super League is being staged.

All three players were allowed to continue playing in the tournament.

“We know what we are doing,” PSL Chairman Najam Sethi said in an interview on a private television channel late Tuesday.

“We have all the evidence and we knew this for a while. We had information, but we cannot talk about stuff right now, a charge sheet will be given to players soon.”

Sethi said PCB’s Anti-Corruption Unit had information about spot-fixing before the PSL began on Feb 9.

“We had identified a few players and then at final stages we knew the ICC had some information as well,” he said.

“When we compared it, the information was the same and then we decided to act on this.”

“We have these players’ phones in which there is more information who they were in touch with, what they talked about,” Sethi added.

He said the cricket board’s anti-corruption unit had infiltrated gambling operations in Pakistan ahead of the tournament.

It’s not the first time Pakistan cricketers have been embroiled in corruption controversies. In 1999 Salim Malik and Ataur Rehman were banned for life following a match-fixing investigation.

In 2010 three players Mohammad Amir, Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif were suspended for five years for their involvement in the bowling of deliberate no-balls at pre-determined times during a test match in England.