Cricketer Shami’s name excluded from BCCI’s pay-list after wife’s complaints

Indian speedster Mohammed Shami found himself in the dock yesterday, a day after he was taken for a whopping 96 runs off 10 overs in a Deodhar Trophy match, when his wife Hasin Jahan accused him of having extra-marital affairs with multiple women and indulging in obscene ‘online chat’ and exchange of photographs with them.

The BCCI’s latest list, which it claims has the stamp of approval of captain Virat Kohli and team director Ravi Shastri, has A+ ranked players getting Rs.2-7 crores; surprisingly enough, M.S. Dhoni, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja don’t figure in this list but are placed only in list ‘A’.  The decision (to drop Shami’s name) was taken after the Committee of Administrators asked the BCCI to put his name on hold till it was cleared ‘ethically’ that he hadn’t indulged in any wrong-doing.

Jahan, whose close-up and somewhat sexy pictures with Shami on social networking sites created controversy a few months back, has said that Shami was a womanizer who was in constant touch with several women.  She released on her Facebook account Shami’s obscene chats and also spilled the names of girls who were chatting with Shami regularly. She said that the BCCI was aware of it but didn’t take it seriously enough in the past.

Usually, former/retired players’ names are taken off from the pay-list but this is for the first time that the name of a player, who is an integral part of the team’s Test match plans, has been excluded. Hasin also said that when Indian team tours abroad, some members are provided with ‘girls’ for some fun and named broker Kuldeep behind arranging for such girls. “It happened recently in South Africa too,” Jahan said, referring to India’s recently-concluded tour of South Africa.