Betting scandal leaves cricket's bosses groping in the dark
By Kuldip Lal
8 January 1999
NEW DELHI, Jan 8 (AFP) - Worried cricket administrators will tread a
thorny path when they gather in New Zealand this weekend to fight the
betting and match-fixing scandal shadowing the gentleman's game.
The executive board of the International Cricket Council (ICC), which
holds a two-day session in Christchurch from Sunday, is undecided how
to resolve the sport's biggest crisis since the ``bodyline'' controversy
six decades ago.
``We mean business, but the modalities have to be worked out,'' said ICC
president Jagmohan Dalmiya, who will not attend the meeting because of
a bereavement in the family.
``We will have to decide whether a commission should be set up because
committees don't have the power sometimes. And if it's a commission
there will be legal implications.''
Dalmiya, who is determined to change the ICC's image of a lethargic
and laid-back body, concedes it will not be easy to get to the root of
the scandal.
``We have to avoid the situation where if any player plays a rash
stroke he's in the dock,'' he said. ``It's better not to nab the
culprits than hurt an innocent even 20 percent.''
Dalmiya dismissed criticism that an ICC probe would prove futile since
the guilty would never come forward voluntarily and proving any
charges would be extremely difficult.
``Certain players have come forward and certain people have been
identified. You cannot say we are fighting a ghost,'' he said.
Dalmiya, a former Indian cricket board secretary, knows the perils
that lie ahead.
It was he who roped in a renowned judge to probe Test allrounder Manoj
Prabhakar's allegations last year that an unnamed team-mate offered
him 25,000 dollars to play badly in a one-day match in Sri Lanka in
1994.
Yeshwant Chandrachud, the former head of India's Supreme Court, not
only absolved all Indian cricketers of any wrongdoing, but the Indian
board filed a suit against Prabhakar and the magazine which carried
his allegations.
This, however, did not discourage Pakistan from launching it's own
inquiry when Australian stars Mark Waugh, Shane Warne and Tim May
accused Pakistan captain Salim Malik of offering bribes to play badly
in a Test match in 1994.
The matter remains unresolved even though an interim report of the
Pakistan Cricket Board found evidence against Malik, Wasim Akram and
Ijaz Ahmed and wanted them out of international cricket till the
inquiry was completed.
Akram finds himself back as Pakistan's captain and Ijaz remains a
crucial member of the team as a separate judicial commission headed by
a judge of the Lahore High Court continues it's investigations.
The issue was further complicated when Warne and Waugh, who accused
Malik of bribing them, themselves admitted last month they sold
weather and pitch information to an Indian bookmaker during a tour of
Sri Lanka.
The Australian Cricket Board's admission it hid the facts for four
years caused an uproar and encouraged Pakistan to reopen
investigations against Warne and Waugh.
The Australians were not the only ones to point fingers at Malik. His
Pakistani team-mates Basit Ali and Rashid Latif walked out of an
African tour in 1995 saying Malik, the then-captain, was involved with
bookmakers.
The seed of suspicion that cricket was not clean was sown much earlier
in 1991 when India accused organisers of Sharjah tournaments of a
pro-Pakistani bias, and refused to play in the popular desert venue
for four years.
The Indians, who lost regularly to their arch-rivals at Sharjah since
Javed Miandad's famous last-ball six in the 1986 Australasia Cup
final, were convinced Dubai bookmakers were hand-in-hand with the
organisers.
``It was not clean,'' a former Indian cricketer said of Sharjah
matches. ``You could sense that something was wrong somewhere, although
I hear things have improved a lot there.''
England's Adam Hollioake said he had been promised millions by a
bookmaker during the four-nation Sharjah tournament in 1997 for
revealing information on teams, an offer the player said he declined.
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