'ICC must be more transparent and accountable'

By Ted Corbett

LONDON, MAY 23. The kindest way you can look at the preliminary report into corruption drawn up for the International Cricket Council by Sir Paul Condon and his Anti-Corruption Unit is to say that no-one within the game wants to believe a word he has written.

My radio is full of the noise of denial, from Malcolm Gray, the Chairman of the International Cricket Council, who admits administrators were slow to react to the scandal but says there will be no further comment until the ICC meeting a month from now; from Matthew Fleming, Chairman of the Professional Cricketers' Association, who says that match-fixing is prevalent on the sub-continent but that we must not even think it exists in England; from Barry Richards, former South African batsman and now a television pundit, who says players must be paid enough to ensure that they are not tempted to throw games. Only Mike Gatting, once England's captain, and Lord MacLaurin, Chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, demanded that the guilty be banned for life; and like all the rest they spoke in sadness, not anger.

It would be more to the point if all these people - but particularly Gray, who is the leader of the world governing body - showed a streak of fury, a desire for urgency, a wish to clean up cricket thoroughly. Now, as never before, we must have action: measured action based on the report by a professional policeman who is, as far as anyone can judge from the depth and accuracy of his 20,000 word report, making a remarkably good job of his mission to stop match-fixing wherever he finds it.

Reading the report today I had the sense of the old- fashioned copper at work, taking a careful note of everything, weighing up the possibilities and then going back to the station and ringing round the experts, listening to the evidence and making a judgement. You could almost see him, in the role of the village policeman of my youth, leaning on his bicycle, taking out his notebook, giving the tip of his pencil a careful lick and then saying: ``I have reason to believe you have committed an offence, young sir, and I shall have to take down your particulars.''

Condon has taken down everyone's particulars and come to a conclusion which I find satisfying because it was my own verdict after years of first of all listening to the rumours, then reading (with profound disbelief in the beginning) what Hansie Cronje had done and finally going through the King Commission report and the meticulous work of the Indian CBI. He says: ``In some respects `match fixing' is a misnomer to describe corrupt incidents within a match which have little or no effect on the outcome of the game and consequently are harder to detect. For ease of reference I tend to call these phenonomen `occurrence fixing.' I tend to call it ''player fixing`` which covers both a bookmaker's attempt to predetermine the result or a single incident such as the score at which a batsman will get out or what a captain will do if he wins the toss. Condon is no fool, nor does he appear to be ready to supervise a whitewash. Eventually the game may be grateful but he will be right to ask for more passion in the desire to find the bad guys, a greater determination to search every niche for those in high places who have sold the game - never mind a game - and the courage to ignore threats of legal action.

Alec Stewart is about to lead England into the second Test even though he has been accused of receiving œ 5,000 sterling from a bookmaker back in 1993 when requests for information about who might play, what was the state of the pitch and how the weather might affect the game were not considered as suspicious as they are now. If Stewart were a policeman like Condon and accused of an act which lowered the reputation of his profession he might be suspended until he had been seen by a team of investigators and cleared. That has not happened in this inquiry, players are still being selected for their country even though they have been punished for their connections with bookmakers and no-one seems to protest. Nor is it one of Condon's recommendations to ICC about the way the game is conducted in future.

Until cricket sets such high standards it risks further corruption. ''The potential for corruption remains a real threat,`` says Condon, former head of the Metropolitan Police who becomes Lord Condon next month. ''ICC must be more transparent and accountable.`` If M'Lord can achieve that goal he will have made progress.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Sport
Previous : What they 'fixed'
Next     : PCB to launch probe into two World Cup matches