SYDNEY, Dec 10 (AFP) - Former Australian Cricket Board chairman Alan Crompton said Thursday an Indian bookmaker may have paid Shane Warne and Mark Waugh 11,000 dollars (6,600 US) to try to lure them into a long term deal2E

Crompton was chairman of the ACB in 1995 and personally handled the inquiry into the two players taking money from the bookie.

"It's been suggested they were being set up to do other things at another time but it never got that far," he said.

"It never ever got that far because the players realised they'd compromised their situation.

"If there had been the slightest hint of anything else we would have handled the matter differently. We took action that was appropriate at the time," he added.

Warne and Waugh admitted Wednesday they had been "naive and stupid" in accepting cash from the bookmaker for information on the weather and the state of the pitch.

Crompton admitted he had not interviewed the bookmaker but insisted no other information had been passed on to the bookie.

"If there had been a hint of anything else we would have pursued it," said Crompton, a Sydney lawyer.

He said the players were being paid for a "very modest and harmless service, harmless as they saw it".

Warne and Waugh were fined 8,000 dollars (4,800 US) and 10,000 dollars (6,000 US) respectively in 1995 but the disciplinary action was hushed up for three years.

Crompton defended the Board's action in keeping the matter quiet.

"Senior players deserve protection, too," he said. "There could have been the risk of innuendo or suspicion or assumption they were involved in other levels when I was clearly satisfied they were not," he said.

Australian captain Mark Taylor said in Adelaide where his team were preparing for the third Test against England starting Friday the matter should be forgotten.

"They made mistakes but life goes on," he said.

However the controversy will clearly not lie down as all Australia's media agonised over the country's loss of face on Thursday and one radio station started a poll asking listeners to ring in to say whether Warne should be allowed to play Test cricket again.