Indian police have made little headway in a probe into a 2000 cricket match-fixing scam due a problem in translating taped conversations in Afrikaans, a report said on Sunday.
In 2000, police in New Delhi had filed a case against Proteas cricketers, including then captain Hansie Cronje, and middlemen for allegedly accepting money to influence the outcome of matches.
But the police said they had made no progress in the case as they could not find a translator, the Hindustan Times reported.
”We have approached the South African High Commission and also Jawaharlal Nehru University, but failed to find a translator,” an unnamed official of the police’s elite Crime Branch told the newspaper.
Crime branch joint police commissioner Ranjit Narayan, who on Thursday questioned batsman Herschelle Gibbs over the scandal, said police were still looking for someone to decipher the conversations.
Gibbs had admitted accepting money from Cronje to score fewer than 20 runs against India in a one-dayer during their March-April 2000 tour.
He subsequently scored 74 runs and said he had ”forgotten” about the deal, but was suspended and fined. He subsequently refused to tour India after failing to obtain assurances he would not be detained.
Cronje also admitted involvement and was served with a life ban before dying in a plane crash in 2002. – Sapa-AFP