Fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar has been banned for five years by the Pakistan Cricket Board following a disciplinary hearing in Rawalpindi

He takes drugs and beats up his team mate with a bat but gets away with it. He criticizes PCB and gets banned for 5 years. It should have been done long ago tbh.

"I have been victimised, I have been pinpoint targeted," Shoaib said at a packed and heated press conference in Islamabad. "I should be told what I did and when I violated discipline. I am what I am because of Pakistan but my punishment is also because I am Pakistani. Banning a guy who played for his country with high fever is wrong."

As had been widely expected, moves to overturn the ban are already underway. The newly-elected prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gillani has told the board chief Nasim Ashraf to review the case again. Hanif Abbasi, a member of parliament from Shoaib's constituency, has also promised to bring up the matter in the national assembly.

And Shoaib himself was typically bullish, warning that he would go to great lengths to contest the ban. "I will not go down without a fight. Even my doping case was mishandled," he said. "I will appeal, as is my right. If that fails I will go to court, if that fails then I will go to the Supreme Court."

It is unlikely that the case will go that far. The PCB is likely, in coming days, to come under increasing pressure from a variety of political sources to overturn the decision, most likely when Shoaib appeals to the board itself. Ashraf is a close associate of President Musharraf (patron of the PCB), whose various political opponents are now in power following general elections in February. Talk of an administrative change has already begun.