Australians urge ICC to act over bribery

Melbourne, Oct 8: Australia's top cricket official has called on the sport's world ruling body to take a more significant role in the cur...

Melbourne, Oct 8: Australia’s top cricket official has called on the sport’s world ruling body to take a more significant role in the current investigation into alleged match-fixing by Pakistan players. Australian Cricket Board (ACB) chief executive Malcolm Speed said he wanted to see the International Cricket Council (ICC) deal with the matter itself or appoint an independent panel to look into it.

“The ICC needs to be empowered and then provided with the resources, whether they be internal resources or external resources, to carry out inquiries if they need to be carried

out,” Speed said.

“What I’d like to see ultimately is that there is provision there for an independent inquiry into incidents that occur in the future so that players are put on notice that if there is any bribery or match-fixing there is a mechanism to deal with it.”

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Speed was speaking on his return to Australia today after visiting Pakistan to accompany Australia captain Mark Taylor and batsman Mark Waugh when they testifiedbefore the inquiry.

The Australians repeated their allegations of bribery to the government-appointed judge investigating charges of match-rigging and betting in Pakistani cricket.

But the Australian camp were angry at the way the hearing was conducted, with Australian manager Steve Bernard describing it as an “ambush”.

Members of the Pakistan media were present at the “secret” meeting and one of the accused Pakistani players, former captain Salim Malik, attended the hearing, accompanied by his lawyer, without the Australians prior knowledge.

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“We feel we’ve been deceived,” Bernard told Australian reporters in Pakistan. “We are glad it’s over but we were extremely disappointed with the ambush that took place.”

“Because of our concern for player security we were given an undertaking that the secret would be kept and it wouldn’t be made known that our boys had been to Lahore.”

The bribery issue arose on Australia’s 1994 tour of Pakistan when Waugh, Shane Warne and Tim May accused Malik ofoffering them a bribe to throw the Karachi Test which Pakistan eventually won by one wicket.