Pakistan's high commissioner to Britain Wajid Shamsul Hasan has been branded a "loose cannon" by the diplomats of his own country for his outbursts against the International Cricket Council in the “spot-fixing” scandal.
Hasan has claimed that the suspended trio of Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, who allegedly took money from a bookie to bowl no-balls during the Lord's Test against England, have been framed and the entire scandal is a conspiracy to alienate Pakistan cricket.
Hasan has also insinuated that ICC president Sharad Pawar may have had a hand in getting the three players suspended. But diplomats at the Pakistani legation in Belgravia are less then amused by his stunning remarks with one of them saying that he felt "depressed" by Hasan's statements to the media.
"I suppose it is quite funny for outsiders, but the rest of us find it embarrassing. Anyway, it'll backfire, I have my own contacts among journalists and I am told they (the News of the World) will produce more things on Sunday," a diplomat was quoted as saying by the Independent.
The unnamed diplomat said Hasan's claims have not just caused embarrassment, they have created a sense of anger against Pakistan."We had a great chance here to show that we were taking this matter extremely seriously and would root out any corruption.
Instead we took a position we couldn't sustain, ended giving contradictory statements, lost out anyway and made a lot of our friends in the cricketing world angry."
"We are trying to get him off the TV screens, but there's no stopping him."
Officials close to Hasan said the criticism has come from "his detractors connected to the Pakistani secret service, the ISI, and the military." But a diplomat rejected this saying, "What on earth has all this to do with cricket? The only military thing here is that we have a loose cannon in our hands."