Cricket probe and its impact on players' performance (8 March 1999)

8 March 1999

Cricket probe and its impact on players' performance

Lateef Jafri

The second fixture of the regional Test championship is meandering to a finish at Lahore's Qadhafi Stadium without Salim Malik and Ijaz Ahmad having any part to play in the proceedings of the game. They were omitted from the national conglomerate, though it cannot be said that form or fitness had deserted them.

Was it that some action was going to be taken against the two players on the basis of the conclusions reached by the judicial inquiry being conducted by Justice Malik Mohammad Qayyum of the Lahore High Court. But, if the assumption be true, the followers of the game failed to understand why captain Wasim Akram has not been sidelined for his alleged links with the bookies and involvement in gambling? The reasons for the ouster of Malik and Ijaz and experimentations with fresh hands should be made clear by the selection committee and the cricket board as the endorsement of the council must have been sought before the formal and final announcement of the squad.

It is still not known when the inquest into the betting and match-fixing scandals will end and the recommendations of the one-judge inquiry committee will be made public. The interrogations of the accused players, the bookmakers and even the officials of the cricket board have gone on and on. The registrar of the court with the PCB legal adviser, Ali Sibtain Fazli, even went to the Australian city of Melbourne where all facilities were provided to the Pakistani probe team for fully questioning the Australian cricketers pointing an accusing finger at former Pakistani captain, Salim Malik. Perhaps the whole affair took a new turn with the disclosure by Shane Warne and Mark Waugh that they took payment from an Indian bookie for giving him information on the behaviour of the pitch and weather conditions in the Singer quadrangular in Sri Lanka in late 1994.

The Australian board, as was the earlier case with the accusation against Salim Malik, perhaps to protect its players, tried to cover up the bribery case. Three years after the accused cricketers had been fined - Waugh 10,000 Australian dollars, Warne 8,000 dollars - came the revelation of the golden handshake between the two Aussie Ws and the bookmaker. The inquiry, it seems, went on in a hush - hush manner. Even the Internationals Cricket Council at Lord's was kept in the dark about violation of the game's code of conduct. Five months after Salim Malik's alleged offer of money to Mark Waugh, Shane Warn and Tim May had been revealed by the Sydney Morning Herald the Australian officialdom had raised a hue and cry against what it termed cricket's greatest crisis for 20 years it pressed on the ICC to intervene and take severe action against the Pakistani all-rounder. After the monetary punishment the Aussie cricket establishment had closed the case and had declared the cricket of its country as clean. Last month the investigating lawyer, Rob O'Regan, said a more appropriate penalisation to Waugh and Warne should have been "a suspension for a period of time." "They must have known that it is wrong to accept money and supply pre-match information to an illegal bookmaker who bet on cricket, the lawyer told a Press Conference in Melbourne.

O' Regan also rapped the Australian board for failing to inform the Pakistani officials about the accusations made by its players. The lawyer thought that the Salim Malik case and the Waugh-Warne bribery had a connection; they were not separate as the ACB had come to the conclusion.

The full 43- page O'Regan report has still not been submitted to his board but he promised to dispatch a copy of it to the ICC headquarters at Lord's.

The Pakistan board chairman, Khalid Mahmud, took the Australian probe report with reservations and doubted if the questioning of their involved players was indepth. He thought the interrogation of the bookie was necessary to touch the core of the issue.

He criticised the Australian bid to cover up the two cricketers, which raises suspicion about the mode and manner of the problem.

Khalid Mahmud also refused to let the matter drop, saying more revelations may come to light if the issue is looked into more comprehensively.

The Australian cricket officials were not prepared to reopen the case as, in their opinion, there can't be a second penal action.

If that is so then why the PCB made a request to the government for a judicial commission to go into match-fixing and bribery scandals after an earlier inquiry, conducted by former judge of the apex court, Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim, had cleared Salim Malik, rejecting the allegations as not worthy of any credence. He had concluded that the accusations appeared to have been "concocted for reasons best known to the accusers."

Even in India when last year Justice Chandrachud launched his investigations on the cricket scandals his conclusions drawn up in a report were held up by the board on what Raj Singh Dungarpur, BCCI President, said, the report, if made public, would have done immense damage to the cricket of his country.

As the reputed Sydney Morning Herald made the disclosure about the Waugh-Warne involvement in cricket gambling last December, Justice Qayyum had to admit that the whole scenario had undergone a change, adding that the authencity of the allegations against Salim Malik was suspect. (Both the players had made their statements before the Lahore court representatives in Melbourne on oath).

For the last six months the judicial inquiry is continuing with about 45 witnesses examined and more to go through the process of questioning. Certainly the judge is doing a hard work and trying to submit a transparent report with his recommendations of action against the players to the patron of the board, President Rafiq Tarar. The board chairman has promised to implement the judge's proposed punishment. But will the PCB follow a different course from the ICC's recent directive on cricket offences? At the mid-term meeting of the ICC at Christchurch in January the global cricket governors and law-makers had decided to set up an independent commission to probe match-fixing and bribery allegations and establish uniform penalties.

David Richards, ICC Chief Executive, had told a news conference in the New Zealand city that the nine Test-playing countries had unanimously agreed to arm the ICC with wide-ranging powers to deal with match-fixing and bribery.

In allowing the ICC to tackle the scandals, each of the member nations has agreed to relinquish some of its sovereign powers over domestic cricket. Richards added previously individual countries had been allowed to determine their own rules on player indiscipline but they will now be bound by the uniform penalties established and enforced by the ICC.

Will the Pakistan inquiry and its recommendations be submitted to the ICC for action to be taken by Lord's as agreed by the Test-playing nations (full members of the ICC).

In any case one expects an early completion of the questioning of the players and examination of the witnesses. For the cricketers are fearful of penalisation, their form will take a tumble as long as the inquiry proceedings go on. Certainly a 'B' team cannot take part in the World Cup.

Source :: Dawn (https://dawn.com/)