Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Shahryar Mohammad Khan and leading cricketing nations like Australia and England have been urged by former Pakistan fast bowler Sarfraz Nawaz to put pressure on Narayanaswami Srinivasan to step down as ICC chairman on moral grounds following the Indian Supreme Court's verdict on Thursday.
Nawaz claimed that though Srinivasan was now duty-bound to step down as ICC chairman after the SC verdict, the PCB along with Australia and England as main members of the 'Big Three' countries in world cricket should build a united stand to pressurise the top Indian cricket official to step down for the sake of smooth and controversy free staging of the forthcoming Cricket World Cup.
Nawaz said that there are too many double standards in world cricket today, which continue to irk honest, fair-minded critics, adding that for example, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) banned Pakistan leg-spinner Danish Kaneria for life but Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, facing similar charges, is still playing on which is clearly a case of double standards, the Dawn reported.
Nawaz insisted that the ICC must not adopt such double standards for Srinivasan if the world body wants to keep the 2015 World Cup free of fixing and other controversies.
In a recent statement, the ICC chief executive Dave Richardson had expressed resolve that strict arrangements have been made to prevent any kind of corruption in the Cricket World Cup, being held in Australia and New Zealand from Feb 14 to March 29.
Nawaz, who is currently in Lahore supervising a PCB training camp for U-19 cricketers at the NCA, said that for the last many years he has been speaking against betting and match-fixing but claimed that the ICC has done nothing substantial yet to rid the game of the menace.