KARACHI: the English cricket authorities on Wednesday asked the Sindh High Court (SHC) to help them recover almost £250,000 ($390,000) in fines and costs levelled against banned Pakistan leg-spinner Danish Kaneria for spot-fixing.

A disciplinary panel of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) banned Kaneria in June 2012 after he was found guilty of corruption while playing for Essex in a limited-overs match in 2009.

The panel imposed a fine of £100,000 on Kaneria. He lost his second and final appeal against the penalty in August 2014.

Khawaja Naveed, a lawyer for the ECB, said the petition in the SHC demands Kaneria pay the fine as well as additional costs incurred over the course of the case.

“I have filed a petition on behalf of the ECB in which we have demanded that a total cost of £249,000 be recovered from Kaneria,” Naveed said.

Naveed said a notice would be issued to Kaneria by Saturday and in case the former leg-spinner fails to pay the ECB had asked the court to demand the former player sell his property.

Kaneria, who said last year he would consider appealing in either a European court or the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, said he had not yet received formal notification of the action.

“I have come to know about this through the media and if I get any notice I will consult my lawyers,” he said.

Under International Cricket Council rules, a ban on a player by any member country is applicable globally, though Kaneria took part in a private T20 cricket league organised in the US last year.

Kaneria is Pakistan’s most successful Test spinner with 261 wickets in 61 matches.

He is also only the second-ever Hindu to play for Pakistan at the highest level — the first was his wicket-keeping cousin Anil Dalpat — and was something of a poster-child for the country’s minorities until his ban.

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2015

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