Halbish lifts the lid on Aussie controversies

Graham Halbish, formerly the chief executive of the Australian Cricket Board, has come out fighting in a book he has launched in Australia. Halbish, who was sacked in 1997 from the body now known as Cricket Australia, has lifted the lid on the Shane Warne-Mark Waugh gambling incident, a top-secret project designed to minimise the effect of a split in world cricket, and the Warne drug affair.

His autobiography, Run Out, is due for release today, and among its disclosures are the plan known as Project Snow, which involved Australia, England, New Zealand and West Indies forming a coalition of their own had the Asian nations decided to break away from the International Cricket Council. The group was setting themselves up in preparation if India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Zimbabwe decided to go it alone.

The non-Asian group didn't want to see a breakaway, and prepared Project Snow as a contingency plan for a worst-case scenario. However, the efforts of Sir John Anderson from New Zealand, in devising a rotation system for the World Cup and ICC chairmanship placated the Asian group.

Halbish also said that after press enquiries started to be made about the fines that had been levelled against Warne and Waugh after their involvement in supplying match information to an Indian bookmaker, he was directed by Denis Rogers, the former board chairman, never to expose the details. The fines had been demanded under the leadership of the then-chairman Alan Crompton, and the decision not to make them public at the time was made by Crompton and Halbish.

Halbish also claimed that it had been common practice for some casinos to offer some players "play money", where they could keep any winnings but did not have to pay for any losses. He found it strange that the ACB tolerated the practice.

Halbish said Warne should have been punished with the full term of two years for his use of a banned diuretic, and that if that had been applied it would probably have ended his career.