'Rawalpindi Express' gets a breather from PCB

Lahore, July 15 (UNI) Describing speedster Shoaib Akhtar's scatching views regarding the 'free hit' experimental law to be enforced by the International Cricket Council (ICC) in one-day internationals from October 1 this year as 'personal opinion', the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has ruled out any disciplinary action against him.

While addressing mediapersons, a PCB official said Shoaib's comments were purely his personal views as an international cricketers and it does not violate PCB's code of conduct so the question of any kind of disciplinary action against him does not arise.

''What Shoaib said about the free hit rule is his personal opinion and the PCB's code of conduct doesn't apply here,'' Zakir Khan, PCB's Director of Cricket Operations was quoted by 'The News' as saying.

''We have a code of conduct for our players but since Shoaib was giving his opinion on a decision by the ICC in his capacity as a player, I don't think we can take any action against him,'' he added.

Earlier in the week, Shoaib described as 'nonsense' ICC's experimental 'free hit' rule that would allow a batsman to take a free hit after every no ball delivered by a bowler without being dismissed saying that newly constituted law was fine for the nascent version of the game (Twenty20 cricket), but not meant for ODIs as they are a more competitive brand of cricket.

However, Zakir hailed a totally different view regarding the 'free hit' law as according to him the new law would help the bowlers to reduce their number of no balls, which in turn would help the game by cutting down the wastage of time.

''I believe the rule is aimed at making it sure that bowlers hurl less no balls so there is minimum wastage of time. And then this rule is also universally popular with the spectators,'' he said.

UNI