'Every time Pakistan lost to India, people thought match was fixed': Nazar

Former Pakistan cricketer Mudassar Nazar spoke on the matchfixing cloud in cricket saying every time his team lost a game to India people back home used to think the match was fixedMatchfixing has haunted Pakistan more in this part of the 21st century with players like Mohammad Amir Mohammad Asif Salman Butt Sharjeel Khan and Khalid Latif serving bans for their involvement in itldquoI think if you look at Pakistans team in the 90s they were talentwise as good as Australia in the 90s But it was a sheer fear factor of losing the game and Im going to be a little bit controversial here The controversy is behind match fixing There was a lot of pressure on the Pakistan team because every time they lost a game people thought the game was dubious the game was fixedrdquoldquoNobody was prepared to accept that they actually lost to a better team So at some stage in the early 90s I was part of that team which was fearful of losing the game and that was entirely due to match fixing or fear of people believing the match was fixedrdquo said Nazar on the sidelines of the conclave organised in Ajman UAE to celebrate the 100th episode of International cricket talk show cricket predictaAlso ReadCricket needs an indoor revolution to combat weather woesNazar who played 76 Tests and 122 ODIs for Pakistan from 1976 to 1989 also believes the matchfixing saga has taken its toll on the teamrsquos performances which have seen a sharp dip across all formats in the last year and a halfldquoYou add another factor there which is the factor of playing against India No Pakistani no Indian would to lose this game Weve seen that in Sharjah and thats why it was such a big event ndash India v Pakistan nobody will lose against each other That wasnt the case with the cricket but with the general public probablyrdquoldquoThere was a lot of pressure there Unfortunately the match fixing saga took its toll on Pakistan teamYou think Pakistan could have recruited a psychologist to cope up with the additional pressureI have never seen a psychologist win a cricket match A lot of the teams have employed psychologists all over the world But it has never workedrdquoThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever