The ICC has been involved in talks with the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol) to increase co-operation in fighting corruption in sport. "The director general of Interpol made contact with us and what I am going to explore is a memorandum of understanding … so we can mutually cooperate and work together," Ronnie Flanagan, the chairman of the ICC's anti-corruption and security unit, told the Associated Press.

FIFA, the governing body for football, announced earlier in the year it would pledge US$29 million to Interpol each year for the next ten years to tackle corruption in football. Flanagan, however, said the ICC didn't have the money to finance investigations. "We don't have money to spend," Flanagan said. "So we can mutually cooperate and work together, but not to the extent that we have any money to pay them to do investigations for us. Unfortunately, investigations themselves fall back to our unit."

Flanagan admitted there was a fear that domestic matches could be affected by corruption, given the increased scrutiny of international fixtures. "The more we tighten up around international events and fixtures, the greater the potential risk … that these criminal people will focus elsewhere," Flanagan said. "I think we must be guarded against that."

At a World Sports Law Report conference, Flanagan called for greater co-operation between sports associations to combat the problem of corruption. "I'm pretty certain that the bad guys within the sports and the malicious criminals - people outside those sports - don't necessarily confine themselves to one sport," he said. "So as they move across the barriers, across different sports, we must ensure we cooperate even more closely together.

"We must share our intelligence, share our methodology, share our experiences."

Most recently, three Pakistan cricketers - Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir - were banned between five and ten years after an ICC tribunal found them guilty of spot-fixing during the Lord's Test against England last year.