MOHAMMAD AMIR has ended his controversial international career at the age of 28 after claiming he is ‘mentally tortured’ by team bosses.
Fast bowler Amir is the man who spent three months in prison on conspiracy charges and was banned from cricket for five years for his part in the fixing scandal of 2010.
Amir quit Tests in 2019 and now insists: “I am leaving cricket for now because I’m being mentally tortured. I don’t think I can bear such torture.
“I’ve borne lots of torture from 2010 to 2015, for which I served my time. I’ve been tortured by being told the Pakistan Cricket Board invested a lot in me.
“But I’ll just say two people invested in me a lot – Najam Sethi (former PCB chairman) and Shahid Afridi (big-hitting all-rounder and former captain). They were the only two. The rest of the team was saying, ‘We don’t want to play with Amir.’
“Recently, the atmosphere that’s been created means I get taunted all the time. Every two months, someone says something against me. Sometimes, the bowling coach (Waqar Younis) says Amir ditched us, sometimes I’m told my workload is unsatisfactory. Enough is enough. I’ve had shabby treatment.”
Amir was a teenage sensation with an apparently glittering career as a highly-skilled left-arm quick bowler.
But, after being sucked into the scandal that erupted during the Lord’s Test in 2010 and bowling deliberate no-balls, he never recaptured those glory years and has become progressively more disenchanted.
He has played county cricket with Essex and a string of T20 teams around the world.
Pakistan Cricket Board chief executive Wasim Khan spoke to Amir and a statement added: “Mohammad Amir confirmed to the PCB chief executive that he has no desires or intentions of playing international cricket and, as such, should not be considered for future matches.”
Meanwhile, Graeme Swann reckons Joe Root should forget about trying to reclaim his England Twenty20 place.
Test skipper Root wants to play in the T20 World Cup in India in October but Swann says he should concentrate on the longer formats.
Swann, in his column for Betfair, said: “England are getting to know their best team which interestingly doesn’t include Joe Root. To my mind, it’s no bad thing if he’s not involved with the T20.
“He’s a brilliant, versatile, all-round player and I’ve always been a massive fan of Joe’s but maybe cricket is moving on now to a point where he can start to focus on the longer form of the game and let the youngsters focus on teeing-off.
“The form of someone like Dawid Malan at the minute…there’s no-one in the world who could keep him out of the team. Literally – he’s the world No.1.”
