ICC announces strategic response as emergency meeting ends

All international players, managers, referees, umpires, match officials and administrators will be required to provide a declaration stating whether they have or have not been approached to become involved in corrupt conduct. In addition, an independent authority (to be known as the Corruption Investigation Authority) will be established immediately to fully investigate and explore the extent to which corrupt practices have entered the sport. Those are the major headlines to emerge upon the closure this afternoon of the emergency International Cricket Council (ICC) meeting held at Lord's.

Speaking at a formal press conference at the end of the one and a half day summit, ICC President, Jagmohan Dalmiya, and Chairman, David Richards, indicated the Council's determination to eradicate any form of corruption from the sport in the future. Both men also alluded to frustration at the lack of hard evidence concerning the practices of betting and match fixing in the past and spoke of a desire to see an end to the spread of uncorroborated allegations. In his prepared statement at the start of the conference, Dalmiya additionally emphasised that stringent penalties (potentially including life bans) will be imposed upon any cricketing figure found guilty of misbehaviour in relation to match fixing.

According to the pair, each of world cricket's major administrative organisations has been advised to adopt a vigilant stance in its approach to eliminating the blight of corruption. Each has been advised to pay particular respect to the progress of a judicial inquiry which will begin in South Africa shortly and to the much-discussed Qayyum Inquiry findings, which will be released in Pakistan within five weeks.

Following something of an unexpected lengthening of proceedings, the summit came to its cessation at around two o'clock London time; moments later, Dalmiya and Richards faced a crush of around seventy members of the press to outline the Council's official stance. The emergency meeting itself, which had been organised in a bid to start the process of repairing cricket's image after weeks of damaging revelations about the growing influence of betting and match fixing in the sport, had brought together eighteen delegates from administrative bodies across the cricketing world.