ACB bear brunt of the blame for 'cover-up' (10 December 1998)

10 December 1998

ACB bear brunt of the blame for 'cover-up'

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins in Adelaide

A RASH of righteous indignation broke out around Australia yesterday when it became clear that there had been an official cover-up over the connection of two national heroes to the allegations of bribery and corruption in cricket.

Looking on the bright side... Shane Warne, left, and Mark Waugh get their message acrossBlame seemed to be attaching itself less to Shane Warne and Mark Waugh, for accepting money for passing on basic cricketing information to an illegal bookmaker in Sri Lanka in 1994, than to the Australian Cricket Board for keeping their subsequent investigation a secret.

The belated disclosure that Waugh and Warne had been fined 10,000 and 8,000 Australian dollars respectively (£4,000 and £3,200) for taking cash from an illegal bookmaker in Sri Lanka four years ago has "damaged the high reputation of Australian cricket", according to the ACB chief executive, Mal Speed, who was not in office at the time.

Speaking after the two players had read out virtually identical prepared statements before a packed media conference at the Adelaide Oval, Speed admitted that, with hindsight, it would have been better not to have kept the matter from the public, particularly in the light of the two judicial inquiries in Pakistan into alleged involvement by their players in match-fixing for money. A judge in Lahore is expected to make his report to the President of Pakistan on Tuesday week.

Mark Waugh was not asked about his own acceptance of money, nor did he disclose it, when he gave evidence to Justice Malik Mohammed Qayuum in Lahore two months ago during Australia's tour of Pakistan. Waugh repeated evidence he had given four years earlier that the then Pakistan captain, Salim Malik, had offered him $200,000 (£121,000) to play badly in a one-day international on the 1994 tour.

The amounts involved in alleged match-fixing were far in excess of the sums which Waugh and Warne received, respectively £2,400 and £2,000, for giving information about weather and pitch conditions to a bookmaker based in Delhi. The two players completely denied giving anything less than their best for Australia in any match or even divulging team tactics or who would be selected. Speed added that they had also denied betting on cricket.

According to a statement read out by Speed on behalf of Alan Crompton, chairman of the ACB at the time of their inquiry into rumours early in 1995, the players had voluntarily offered a full account of what had happened when asked to do so. As one journalist expressed it yesterday, "they were honest about being dishonest". Waugh and Warne were told when they were fined that they had been "naive and foolish in the extreme". Yesterday, Nike, whose products Warne has promoted for three years at a reported cost to the company of £500,000 a year, said they were "considering their position".

Both players reaffirmed yesterday that the information they provided, "on a handful of occasions", was "mundane, and exactly the same as any pre-match media interview". It is easy to see how tempting such money must have seemed. Speed, who said he knew only the first name of the bookmaker involved, admitted that the ACB had not attempted to track him down to see whether he would deny or corroborate the evidence given by the two players.

A former cricketer, Salim Pervez, 51, who played in a single one-day international for Pakistan in 1980, told the judge in Lahore that he had paid Salim Malik and Mushtaq Ahmed $100,000 to lose a match against Australia in the quadrangular tournament in Sri Lanka in 1994, the same tournament in which it now transpires the two Australians were given money for information.

Details of the board's findings were conveyed in confidence in 1995 to the International Cricket Council, whose chief executive, David Richards, was formerly chief executive of the ACB. Since then, these two organisations and the Pakistan Cricket Board have tended to pass the buck to one another, but Speed said that the whole issue of match-fixing, which he believes has now ceased, will be on the agenda of the ICC at their next meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand, in January. He promised greater "transparency" in future over serious matters of discipline.

The world of cricket now awaits the verdict of Mr Justice Qayuum. Whatever it is, there is likely to be a move to give the ICC more formal powers to investigate any suggestion of corruption in international matches. The very idea of it would once have seemed totally absurd.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)