The Supreme Court has adjourned to January an appeal filed by former Indian cricketer S Sreesanth challenging the life time ban imposed on him by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

After hearing Salman Khurshid, counsel for the player, a bench consisting of Justices Ashok Bhushan and Hemant Gupta decided to list the case in the third week of January. The Bench said that the matter required to be heard at length. Khurshid submitted that Sreesanth is already 35 years old and was running out of time as a player.

The life ban on Sreesanth was imposed on Sreesanth by the BCCI in view of his alleged involvement in spot fixing during the 2013 season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket. A special court in Delhi acquitted him in the case in 2015 but the BCCI did not remove the ban on the cricketer. He then approached the Kerala High Court and it too revoked the decision of the cricket board saying it was a “denial of natural justice” to Sreesanth. The cricketer approached the high court saying the BCCI’s refusal to remove the ban was ruining his sporting career.

The board, which considered the case to be “open and shut”, filed a petition against the single-judge bench’s order. In October 2017, a division bench of the Kerala High Court reinstated the ban on Sreesanth. Earlier this year, he moved the Supreme Court for relief.

—India Legal Bureau