JULIAN LINDEN, Sydney | Wednesday 12.00pm
THE head of the Australian players association accused the International Cricket Council (ICC) on Wednesday of contributing to the Hansie Cronje scandal by failing to deal with previous matchfixing allegations.
South African captain Cronje was sacked on Tuesday after admitting receiving money from an Indian bookmaker in one of the worst scandals in cricket history.
Former Australia off-spinner Tim May, now head of the Australian Cricketers Association, said the ICC had only itself to blame for the worsening crisis after years of neglect.
May was among three Australian players who accused former Pakistan Test captain Salim Malik of offering them money to play poorly during a tour of the sub-continent in 1994.
Malik and his team mates Wasim Akram and Ijaz Ahmed were each investigated by the Pakistan Cricket Board and cleared to continue playing.
”If we look back to 1994, it was important then that cricket deliver an efficient and effective investigation about match fixing,” May told Australian radio.
”Given this is six years down the track, it’s pretty easy to say cricket hasn’t done a very good job.”
Former Australia batsman Neil Harvey said the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) was also to blame for failing to take a firm stand against Shane Warne and Mark Waugh after they were embroiled in a betting scandal.
Warne and Waugh both admitted taking money from an illegal Indian bookmaker on the same tour in return for information on pitch and weather conditions. The pair were fined but escaped suspension after the ACB informed the ICC but did not make the incident public until former Australia batsman David Hookes broke the story on Australian radio on December 8, 1998.
”Our board tried to shove the thing under the carpet,” Harvey said. ”Rather than suspend them, which you’d think they should have done for one or at least two years, they just sort of forgot about it and said that it didn’t happen.”
Matthew Engel, the outgoing editor of cricket almanack Wisden, told Australian radio on Wednesday that cricket administrators had been ignoring betting scandals for the better part of 20 years.
He said the ICC’s failure to stamp out player betting could be traced back to 1981, when Australian players Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh wagered money at odds of 500-1 on England beating Australia in the third test at Headingley.
England recovered from an impossible situation to win the match. While there was never suggestion of the pair being involved in a fix, Engel said the ICC’s failure to punish the players had set a dangerous precedent. — Reuters