Rashid Latif seeks to convince Pakistan Cricket Board after his bookie claim

Pakistan's former captain, Rashid Latif will meet the PCB officials and its legal team next week to convince them that he has enough evidence to back up his claim that an alleged Indian bookmaker, Annu Bhatt, was the guest of the board in 2005/06.

Well-informed sources said that after the board sent him a legal notice asking him to provide evidence to back his claims about Bhatt having visited Pakistan as a guest of the board, Latif told them he wanted to meet them in person.

"Rashid said he would prefer to meet with PCB's top officials and legal team in person next week in Lahore," a source said.

"He has indicated that he will provide them with all the documents on the basis of which he made the claim about Bhatt having visited Pakistan as a guest of the PCB when England and India toured Pakistan in 2005/06."

The source said that the board had told Latif to meet them next week and come prepared with evidence or retract his earlier statement.

Latif made the claim in a statement he released on the Danish Kaneria spot-fixing case in which Bhatt has been deemed as a central figure by the England and Wales Cricket Board, which has imposed a life ban on Kaneria from playing cricket.

The ECB ban was later endorsed by the ICC and its member boards and the leg-spinner can now have no association with cricket at any level in all Test playing nations.

Bhatt has been dubbed as a "bookmaker" by the ECB which says that Kaneria knew him and tried to corrupt and lure players in his Essex team to do spot-fixing for Bhatt in 2009.

An Essex police investigation into the spot-fixing charges ended without them filing any charges against Kaneria due to lack of evidence.

In the documents and statements examined by the ECB disciplinary panel in the hearings in 2012 and 2013 which led to the ban on Kaneria, England captain, Alastair Cook has also given his statement.