Danish Kaneria challenges ECB's life ban with another appeal

Danish Kaneria hopes to revoke the life ban handed out to him by the ECB

Former Pakistani cricketer Danish Kaneria filed another appeal in United Kingdom’s commercial court against the life ban handed out to him by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) after being proved guilty of corruption while playing for Essex in 2009.

The right-arm leg-spinner was prosecuted by the ECB’s disciplinary panel after he was found guilty of “cajoling and pressurising” fellow Essex teammate Mervyn Westfield into accepting cash to concede a pre-decided number of runs in a match against Durham in 2009.

The ECB handed down a lifetime ban and slapped fines amounting to £100,000 on Kaneria for indulging in malpractices of the game. Westfield however, was asked to serve four months in prison after being proven guilty of spot-fixing.

“I have launched my appeal today before the UK’s commercial court,” ESPNcricinfo quoted Kaneria as saying yesterday. “I want to be heard by an independent judiciary and want all the proceedings open in public. I have nothing to hide and want everything to be open. I have suffered a lot and my case never was heard fairly by the ECB.”

Although Kaneria was punished based on a domestic board’s regulation, the 32-year-old faces the ban internationally as according to the ICC’s anti-corruption code, all boards worldwide must uphold the decisions of any domestic board, in this instance, the ECB.

Kaneria, on the other hand has strongly denied being involved in any sort of misconduct of the game. Former Pakistan captain Rashid Latif has unwaveringly backed Kaneria hitting out at ECB’s attitude towards the case.

Latif said: “Right from the onset I had my doubts on the approach adapted by the ECB in the spot-fixing case against Kaneria and the more I dug into it, the more I realised that there is a deeper truth behind all that have been presented before the general public.

“Since it was a jolt for the English cricket structure as one of their own players got in a fix they went all out to bail their own player (Mervyn Westfield) out, and in the process made Kaneria the scapegoat with a sole purpose to safeguard their own ego,” he concluded.