Now Jadeja has been stopped from playing League Cricket
Jadeja stopped from playing local league match
30 January 2003
Former Test cricketer Ajay Jadeja, whose five-year match-fixing ban was overturned earlier this week by an Indian court, was stopped from playing a local league match by officials on Thursday.
Jadeja was playing his first official game in over two years for National Stadium Cricket Club, a prominent team in the city's first-division league, when organisers intervened and had the match abandoned.
"We started the game, but after about five to seven overs Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) officials arrived and said they would not let me play," Jadeja said.
Confusion remains about the status of Jadeja, who had been banned for five years from all cricket by India's national cricket board in December 2000 after an internal inquiry into a federal police report on corruption in the game.
An arbitrator appointed by the Delhi High Court quashed the ban on Monday saying the board's internal probe was illegal.
"As far as I was concerned, I was free to play cricket. I'm not sure what the legality of the matter is," Jadeja said.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has said their decision-making working committee will decide in 90 days on Jadeja's fate and if they want to challenge the court order.
"The Board has already said they will take three months to get legal opinion," DDCA vice-president C.K. Khanna told Reuters.
"Unless we receive a directive from the BCCI, how can we allow Jadeja to play?"
But Jadeja's lawyer Vineet Malhotra said he did not need any further permission.
"I don't understand why they the DDCA officials should behave like this," he said. "If this carries on then we will have no option but to file for contempt of court."
Former India captain Mohammad Azharuddin and Ajay Sharma had been banned for life and test paceman Manoj Prabhakar for five years for match-fixing. All the players have denied any wrongdoing. Azharuddin has also challenged the ban in court in his hometown of Hyderabad.