Gibbs confident of touring India

Herschelle Gibbs, the South African opener, has said that he would tour India, if selected for the Champions Trophy in 2006

Cricinfo staff
08-Dec-2005


Herschelle Gibbs said that the match-fixing controversy was behind him © Getty Images
Herschelle Gibbs, the South Africa opener, has said that he would tour India, if selected for the Champions Trophy in 2006. He had opted out of South Africa's recent one-day series in India in December for fear of being arrested after being implicated in a match-fixing scandal with Hansie Cronje, the late South Africa captain.
"What the UCB [United Cricket Board of South Africa] have told me is that it will be sorted out before the ICC Champions Trophy next year in India," Gibbs told AFP. He added that the incident was behind him. "No. It's been five years now. History is history, you can't change it. You get the odd chirp about it every now and again about it but you can't change it. It's bound to happen. I'd like to think that I've still got four or five years of really good cricket left in me."
Gibbs served a six-month ban after he and Nicky Boje, the left-arm spinner, were involved in the match-fixing controversy that broke during their tour of India in 2000. During the recent one-day series, the Indian police had said their investigations were continuing and that they could not guarantee that Gibbs and Boje would not be questioned or arrested if they came to India.
Gibbs added that he wanted to achieve a balance in his batting. "You have got to set your goals. If you don't quite accomplish them on a yearly basis you have got to look back and see where you are going wrong. For me it's probably the mental side of it that I've got to work on. But I've found a really good balance over the last two or three years of defence and attack and I think if you speak to a lot of top-order batters that is the key."