The Board of Control for Cricket in India on Tuesday issued show cause notices to six cricketers, including senior players Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khan, for their alleged involvement in a pub brawl after India's humiliating exit from Twenty20 World Cup in the West Indies.
Besides Yuvraj and Zaheer, show cause notices were served on Ashish Nehra, Rohit Sharma, Piyush Chawla and Ravindra Jadeja.
"Board secretary N Srinivasan signed the show cause notices served this afternoon," a top BCCI source said.
Although details of the notices are not known, it is learnt that the players have been given seven days' time to respond to the charge of getting involved in a pub brawl in St Lucia on May 11.
According to reports, six Indian cricketers were in the pub, where the fans started taunting and abusing them for their failure to reach the semi-finals and the cricketers reacted leading to the brawl.
Both Yuvraj and Nehra denied the brawl and even team manager Ranjib Biswal sought to play down the issue on his arrival from the West Indies.
But after Biswal submitted his report to BCCI president Shashank Manohar on Monday, its chief administrative officer Ratnakar Shetty said that the Board conducted an inquiry into the incident and decided to crack the whip on the errant players.
"We conducted an inquiry over the incident in the West Indies that was widely reported in the media. After considering all the information that we have gathered, the president took the decision that the Board secretary will issue show cause notices to those players," Shetty said.
The incident happened at 'Tequila Joe's' pub on May 11, at Gros Islet, after India lost to Sri Lanka in their last Super Eight fixture and crashed out.
The reports in the media were promptly denied by Yuvraj on his Twitter page, where he wrote: 'There was no fight, not even an argument' and asked the media not to 'make up stories'.
After returning home, Nehra too denied there was a brawl in which the players were involved.
"No one said anything to us. There were many fans from all over the world from different teams but nothing happened with us," Nehra said.
"As far as my knowledge goes, no untoward incident happened us. We went to have our dinner there and were watching the West Indies and Australia match. Rest of the things that I am listening now, I have no knowledge of anything," added Nehra.
