 Shoaib (l) and Asif served one month of their bans before appeal |
Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif are among the 30 players named by Pakistan in their preliminary squad for the Twenty20 World Cup in September. The pacemen had been suspended for two years and a year respectively after testing positive for nandrolone.
But the Pakistan Cricket Board lifted the bans after the players claimed they had not knowingly taken the drug.
Shoaib Malik captains the initial squad, which will be cut to 15 for the competition in South Africa.
Shoaib and Asif recently escaped sanction from the World Anti-Doping Agency after their failed drugs tests in 2006.
They missed the recent World Cup in the Caribbean through injury, and Pakistan were dumped out in the first round.
All 30 in the Twenty20 squad will have to undergo dope tests as part of Pakistan's zero tolerance policy against drugs in sports.
"We just want to avoid any more incidents and also because we remain committed to the International Cricket Council (ICC) strict anti-doping policy in the sport," Zakir Khan, director of cricket operations said.
Preliminary squad: Shoaib Malik (captain), Shahid Afridi, Younis Khan, Mohammad Yousuf, Yasir Hameed, Fawad Alam, Salman Butt, Imran Nazir, Abdul Razzaq, Kamran Akmal, Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Sami, Mohammad Asif, Umar Gul, Rao Iftikhar, Imran Farhat, Khurram Manzoor, Khalid Latif, Mohammad Hafeez, Misbah-ul-Haq, Naveed Latif, Faisal Iqbal, Shahid Yousuf, Yasir Arafat, Sohail Tanveer, Zulqarnain Haider, Mohammad Irshad, Najaf Shah, Danish Kaneria, Abdur Rehman.
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