HYDERABAD, (India), Aug 28: India’s former cricket captain Mohammad Azharuddin will appeal again to a higher court after his suit to overturn a life ban from the game over match-fixing allegations was dismissed by a lower judge, his lawyers said on Thursday.

A civil court in Azharuddin’s home city of Hyderabad had on Wednesday ruled in favour of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) which imposed the ban in December 2000.

“We will move the Andhra Pradesh High Court next month to get the ban lifted,” Azharuddin’s lawyer K. Jagadeesh told reporters here.

“It’s not over. In fact, this is just the beginning,” he said, hinting that a long legal battle loomed ahead.

Azharuddin, 40, and ex-first class cricketer Ajay Sharma were banned for life and internationals Ajay Jadeja and Manoj Prabhakar handed five-year suspensions after they were named in a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) match-fixing probe in 2000.

Both Azharuddin and Jadeja said they were innocent of any wrongdoing and challenged the BCCI decision in separate courts.

Jadeja was last month allowed to play domestic cricket by a Delhi court pending a final judgement.

Azharuddin, India’s most successful Test captain and a stylish middle-order batsman, was stranded on 99 Test appearances when he was banned.

He scored 6,215 Test runs and remains one-day cricket’s second-highest scorer after team-mate Sachin Tendulkar with 9,378 runs from 334 matches.

The match-fixing scandal erupted in April 2000 when New Delhi police accused former South African captain Hansie Cronje of fixing matches for an Indian bookmaker.—AFP