Asif and Shoaib likely to attend preliminary hearing

Fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif are likely to attend the preliminary hearing of the doping tribunal scheduled for Saturday, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) announced today. Both players were suspended from the Champions Trophy after testing positive for nandrolone, a banned steroid.

"The preliminary hearing of the tribunal will be held on Saturday and there is a possibility that Akhtar and Asif will appear before them," Salim Altaf, the PCB director of operations told AFP.

Altaf also announced that doping expert Waqar Ahmed, the medical director of the Pakistan Sports Board, had been appointed as the third and final member of the panel. Barrister Shahid Hamid and Intikabh Alam, the former Pakistan captain, are the other members. Hamid represented Salim Malik, the former Pakistan captain during a match- fixing inquiry in 1998 but left the case mid-way.

The tribunal is expected to release their findings in two weeks and the PCB would take a final decision on the players then, as the tests were conducted internally by the board. Both players have pleaded their innocence, saying they had not deliberately taken any banned substance. The PCB has forbidden them from speaking further to the media.

Meanwhile, the Sports Medicine Association of Pakistan criticised the PCB for prematurely disclosing Akhtar and Asif's names in connection with the doping scandal. Clause 16.2 of the ICC's Anti-Doping Code says the ICC and its members should not publicly identify cricketers whose samples have resulted in adverse findings, Danish Zaheer, the association's president, said in a statement.