The judicial hearing in Melbourne on January 8 and the ICC meeting in Christchurch two days later marked the beginning of the end of cricket's long-running bribes and match-fixing saga.

The hearing in Court Number One in Melbourne's King's Street provided the first occasion for the worldwide cricket public to be aware of the international ramifications of match-fixing much discussed in the last four years, as Shane Warne and Mark Waugh already fined by the Australian Cricket Board for their involvement with an Indian bookmaker - were cross-examined by the Pakistani judge looking into the whole affair.

The ICC meeting in Christchurch two days later could prove an even more significant 'first', marking the moment when cricket's governing body, long derided as toothless, acquired some of the policing powers that most other sporting bodies, such as FIFA, football's governing body, already have.

The timing of the two occasions may be coincidental but there was a neat symmetry to mark the end of this wretched business which has plagued cricket for four years. It was exactly four years ago this winter - and once again England were being trounced in Australia - when allegations about players being offered bribes by bookmakers to throw international matches first surfaced.

When the allegations emerged, following Australia's tour of Pakistan in late 1994, it seemed a classic Asian subcontinental cricket disease. Warne, Waugh and Tim May alleged the then Pakistan captain Salim Malik had offered them bribes to throw a Test match in that Pakistan/Australia series.

Although just before then Don Topley, the former Essex cricketer, in a series of claims in the Sunday Mirror, alleged that back in the early '90s Lancashire and Essex had come to an arrangement Lancashire won the one-day match sandwiched between a three-day game won by Essex - the Australian allegations were seen as the first indication that the rumours of match-fixing which often emanated from the subcontinent had some validity.

Betting in the subcontinent, except on racecourses in India, is totally illegal. There are no off-course betting shops in Pakistan - where it is against Islamic law - or in India. This, allied to the pressure-cooker atmosphere of subcontinental cricket where every defeat is ascribed to conspiracies, made it appear ideal for illegal bookies to intervene. The Aust-ralian allegations burst a dam and there then followed a series of allegations against Malik and other players from Pakistan and India.

In India the former Test seamer, Manoj Prabhakar, alleged that a senior cricketer had asked him to play below his best in an international match. This led to an inquiry by a retired chief justice of India but with Prabhakar unwilling to name the senior player the inquiry soon ran into the sand.

In Pakistan the Waugh/Warne allegations against Malik seemed to inaugurate an endless series of inquiries. Although an initial one headed by a judge cleared Malik, as other Pakistani players made allegations, further probes and inquiries followed. Pakistani cricket has always been the equivalent of Byzant-ium politics and the match-fixing allegations seem to give it an even more original colour, particularly when Rashid Latif, the former wicket-keeper and captain, gave vent to a series of damning allegations against Malik.

As much as Malik protested his innocence other stories began to emerge suggesting that there was a problem. Imran Khan spoke of the occasion when, before a Sharjah match, having heard rumours that some players were willing to throw the match, he pooled all the match fee and placed it on a winning bet on Pakistan. On another occasion, in Johann-esburg, the Pakistan team had knelt down in their dressing-room before a match and, placing their hands on a verse of The Koran, had pledged not to throw a match.

Against a background of unsubstantiated allegations, rumour and counter-rumour the Pakistanis stumbled through their inquiries. Early last year an internal probe by the Pakistan Cricket Board suggested that some of the suspicions may be valid and this led to the one-man judicial commission headed by Justice Malik Mohammad Qayyum.

But although this inquiry produced more definite allegations of match-fixing, drawing not only Salim Malik but also Wasim Akram into the net, it was still seen in the rest of the cricket world as a Pakistani problem. Indeed, one Indian policeman who claimed he had definite evidence of some Indian players' involvement with bookies, also said: 'Most cricketers can be bribed except those from England and Australia.'

This cosy illusion was shattered last month when it was revealed that Shane Warne and Mark Waugh - who had set the ball rolling four years ago - were themselves involved with an Indian bookmaker. It emerged that while they had not thrown a match they had been paid by the unnamed bookmaker for acting as a weather forecaster and talking about the state of the pitch for a one-day match against Pakistan in Sri Lanka in 1994.

The Australian Cricket Board had discovered this, fined the cricketers but kept it a secret - or, more accurately, kept it a partial secret. They had only revealed it to David Richards, the chief executive of the ICC, and its then chairman, Sir Clyde Walcott.

In February 1995, at the end of the ACB's meeting at the Sydney Sheraton Hotel, Richards and Walcott - who has already arranged to meet the Australians - were told about the Australian decision to fine Waugh and Warne and asked to keep it a secret.

The revelations about that Australian cover-up have framed both the January 8 Melbourne hearings and the ICC meeting two days later. For the Pakistanis, who have stumbled for four years trying to find some evidence in this morass of allegations, the Australian cover-up has meant that from being the villains of cricket they can now claim to be its victims.

What outraged the Pakistanis was that just before the cover-up Waugh and Mark Taylor (representing Shane Warne) had taken time off from an Australian tour of Pakistan to reiterate their allegations against Salim Malik to the Qayyum commission - but had not revealed Waugh's involvement with the Indian bookmaker. Indeed, when Justice Qayyum had asked Waugh why he was making these very serious allegations against Malik, Waugh had told him that they were shocked to hear a cricketer was willing to offer bribes because they played for the love of their country and not money.

A furious Ali Sibtain Fazli, the lawyer who is representing the Pakistan Cricket Board in these hearings, said: 'Before Mark Waugh gave evidence I administered the oath to him and he solemnly pledged to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We did not ask him about his involvement with the Indian bookmaker because we did not know, but was that telling the whole truth?'

Justice Qayyum, who had laid great store by Waugh's testimony, had to revise his thinking and said: 'While these revelations have no direct bearing on whether Salim Malik agreed to throw matches, it does affect Waugh's credibility as a witness.'

The furore created by the unveiling of the Australian cover-up did have one impact. Before this the Australians had been very reluctant to aid the Pakistanis in their inquiries. Now they seemed to bend over backwards to help and the January 8 hearings saw the ACB pay all the expenses of the Pakistanis who came to Melb-ourne and set up what amounted to a Pakistani court to re-examine Waugh and Warne.

The revelations also helped the Pakistani investigators feel that the jigsaw of evidence that had emerged in the previous months could fit into a meaningful pattern. They focused on that One-Day International between Australia and Pakistan on September 7, 1994 at the Sing-halese Sports Club Ground in Colombo.

This was part of a four-nation Singer Series also involving Sri Lanka and India. Pakistan arrived as firm favourites, having vanquished Sri Lanka 4-1 in a one-day series in Sri Lanka. But in the Singer Series they failed to win a single match and against Australia they suddenly lost a match they were winning.

Set 180 by Australia, Pakistan seemed to be cruising at 80 for 2 when Saeed Anwar retired hurt and Pakistan collapsed, losing by 28 runs. Before the Australian revelations broke, those Pakistani investigators had heard various allegations which could have been explained away as mere coincidence.

For instance, just before Saeed Anwar retired, the Pakistani 12th man had come on and exchanged some words with the batsmen, but now that Waugh and Warne had publicly acknowledged that it was for this match that they had acted as weather forecasters and pitch inspectors for the Indian bookie, the investigators looked back and re-examined the evidence they had collected.

A bookmaker in Lahore, Salim Pervez, had told them he had allegedly paid Salim Malik, the captain in that match, for throwing the match. Salim has always maintained his innocence but now that Waugh and Warne had revealed their link with the bookmaker, could it be that Pervez was acting as a courier to the Pakistanis for the same bookmaker?

If the match was indeed fixed against Pakistan, why was the bookmaker paying the Australians? Was it double insurance? The investigators also re-examined other evidence, such as Saeed Anwar telling them that when he looked at the Australians in the field, he formed the impression the match was fixed.

How far the Pakistani investigators can truly nail these allegations and prove that that match was fixed remains to be seen. But already it is clear that match-fixing will have wider consequences. These wider consequences involve the ICC. In the immediate aftermath of the revelation of the Australian cover-up there was such anger within Pakistani cricket circles that there was some talk of moving against Richards.

The feeling was that Richards, by keeping Warne and Waugh's involvement with an Indian bookmaker secret, hindered rather than helped the Pakistani effort to try to get to the bottom of this squalid affair. As one senior Pakistan cricket official said: 'Imagine a former Pakistani chief executive of the Cricket Board becoming chief executive of the ICC and holding onto such a secret about the Pakistanis. Would the rest of the world believe that it was done properly?'

However, Richards' argument, that he had no alternative but to keep it a secret, carried conviction. Cricket remains a game where national associations are like warlords paying minimal obedience to a central authority. When Richards gave his word to the Austral-ians, nothing in ICC rules empowered the Council to intervene in what was seen as the disciplinary matters of an independent board. Even before the ACB were forced to come clean the ICC planned to acquire greater powers at the Christchurch meeting: the Aust-ralian cover-up merely hastened the process.

But what it has left unresolved is whether cricket can cleanse itself of the stigma of the involvement of bookies with players that is now definitely attached to it. Back in 1981, when England followed on against Australia at Headingley and English bookmakers offered odds of 500-1 against an England victory, Dennis Lillee and Rodney Marsh, both playing for Australia, put a wager on it. There was no suggestion that this would diminish their efforts to beat England at all and, while they won money as a result of the Botham Miracle, they would gladly have forsaken that for an Australian victory.

It's a measure of how tainted cricket has become by these four-year-long allegations of match-fixing that if present-day equivalents of Lillee and Marsh were ever to place such a bet, nobody would believe that they had not played below their best to feather their nests. The Pakistani inquiry may finally reveal the truth about match-fixing, and the Christ-church meeting has undoubtedly given ICC policing powers, but cricket will have to work hard to cleanse itself of this awful stigma.