ISLAMABAD: Pakistan left-arm fast bowler Wahab Riaz said Monday he has agreed to return to test cricket if required for a series in England.
The 34-year-old Riaz has taken 83 wickets in just 27 test matches since making his debut in 2010. He was among 29 players named for the three tests and three Twenty20s in August and September after the Pakistan Cricket Board decided to send an extended squad in case a player is ruled out due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“The Pakistan Cricket Board communicated with me to play test cricket (in England), if required, and to play for Pakistan is always a priority so I said yes without even thinking,” Riaz told reporters during a video teleconference organized by the PCB.
Riaz took an indefinite break from test cricket last year just before Pakistan toured Australia. Mohammad Amir, another left-arm quick bowler, also quit before that tour and the pair's absence didn't go over well with head coach Misbah-ul-Haq or fast-bowling coach Waqar Younis.
But Riaz defended his decision because he had played just four test matches in three years despite being a regular member of Pakistan ODI and Twenty20 teams.
“The priority was not different last year,” Riaz explained. “I haven’t been playing test cricket regularly in the last three, four years before this management arrived so the priority was to focus on white ball cricket."
Riaz also lost his place in the centrally contracted players this year, but for him playing for Pakistan was more important than looking at the contract.
“Of course central contact gives security to a player,” he said. “But playing for Pakistan is more important to me and I have got this opportunity once again by being selected in the team.”
When asked whether it would be only a one-off test series, Riaz said he had to see how things go in England.
“I know playing in England is not easy,” he said. “Getting an opportunity to play for Pakistan in red ball cricket is also a challenge for me which I have to accept and I accepted it.
“As a senior player, I wanted to create an example ... because it all has to be for Pakistan, not for yourself and the color of the ball does not matter.”
The rise in COVID-19 cases in Pakistan has forced the PCB to cancel a training camp of the team and the team is expected to leave for England in early July to get enough time to get used to the conditions.
Pakistan's Riaz ready for test return, if needed in England
https://arab.news/8dvc8
Pakistan's Riaz ready for test return, if needed in England
- 34-year-old Riaz has taken 83 wickets in just 27 test matches since making his debut in 2010
- Riaz took an indefinite break from test cricket last year just before Pakistan toured Australia
Pakistani man convicted in US in political assassination plot tied to Iranian paramilitary
- Asif Merchant, 47, worked for Pakistani banks for decades before going into clothing and other businesses
- He testified he met a Revolutionary Guard operative who gave him countersurveillance training, assignments
NEW YORK: A Pakistani business owner who tried to hire hit men to kill a US politician was convicted Friday in a trial that showcased allegations of Iran-backed plotting on American soil.
As the Iran war unfolded in the Mideast, Asif Merchant acknowledged in a US court that he sought to put an assassination in motion during the 2024 presidential campaign — a plot that was quickly disrupted by American investigators before it had a chance to proceed.
A jury in Brooklyn convicted Merchant on terrorism and murder for hire charges.
The verdict after only a couple hours of deliberations followed a weeklong trial that included remarkable testimony from Merchant himself.
Merchant told the jury he was carrying out instructions from a contact in the Islamic Republic’s powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. According to Merchant, the handler never specified a target but broached names including then-candidate Donald Trump, then-President Joe Biden and Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador who was also in the race for a time.
The Iranian government has denied trying to kill US officials.
The nascent plot fell apart after Merchant showed an acquaintance what he had in mind by using objects on a napkin to depict a shooting at a rally. He asked the man to help him hire assassins. Instead, he was introduced to undercover FBI agents who were secretly recording him, as had the acquaintance.
Merchant told the supposed hit men he needed services that could include killing “some political person” and paid them $5,000 in cash in a parked car in Manhattan.
“This man landed on American soil hoping to kill President Trump — instead, he was met with the might of American law enforcement,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement released after the conviction.
Merchant’s attorney, Avraham Moskowitz, didn’t immediately reply to a message seeking comment.
Merchant, 47, worked for Pakistani banks for decades before going into clothing and other businesses. He has two families, in Pakistan and Iran, and he sometimes visited the US for his garment business.
Merchant testified that he met a Revolutionary Guard intelligence operative about three years ago. The contact gave him countersurveillance training and assignments including the assassination scheme, Merchant said.
He maintained that he had to do his handler’s bidding to protect loved ones in Iran. The defendant said he reluctantly went through the motions but thought he’d be arrested and explain his situation to authorities before anyone was killed.
“I was going along with it,” he said, speaking in Urdu through a court interpreter.
Prosecutors emphasized that Merchant admitted taking steps to enact the plan on behalf of the Revolutionary Guard, which the US considers a foreign terrorist organization, and he didn’t proactively go to authorities.
Instead, he was packing for a flight to Pakistan when he was arrested on July 12, 2024, a day before an unrelated attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania. Officials said it appeared the Butler gunman acted alone but that they had been tracking a threat on Trump’s life from Iran, a claim that the Islamic Republic called “unsubstantiated and malicious.”
When Merchant subsequently spoke to FBI agents to explore the possibility of a cooperation agreement, he didn’t say he had acted out of fear for his family.
Prosecutors argued that he didn’t back up a defense of acting under duress. Merchant sought to persuade jurors he simply didn’t think the agents would believe him because they seemed to “think that I am some type of super-spy,” which he said he was “absolutely not.”
