Indian news round-up

Kamini Kanta Mohanty, a cricket lover, has filed a public interest petition in the Orissa High Court asking for a CBI probe into the allegations of match fixing and betting in cricket reported during the last four years.

The petitioner moved the High court on Friday seeking a direction to the CBI to investigate into the allegations raised by former players, coaches and managers and charging the Union Ministry of Sports and the Board of Control for Cricket in India of failure in holding inquiries into the allegations.

The petition contended that the match-fixing and betting allegations had given a bad name to cricket and the country. Mohanthy said steps should be taken to purge cricket of the unethical elements.

Australian captain Steve Waugh has said that he thinks Sourav Ganguly has the toughest job in the world. ``As India captain, every move of Sourav's is scrutinised by a billion people. Other captains don't face the same scrutiny,'' he said while speaking to an Indian newspaper in Calcutta.

Waugh said ``in the last couple of years especially, Sourav has grown enormously as a batsman. He's certainly among the best we have. But it can be a challenge for somebody so focussed on batting to merge personal expectations with that of the team.''

On Ganguly's stint in the English county championship, Waugh said ``age is a big factor. For Sourav (27), the exposure is at the right time. I don't think it would have been worth it had he gone to Old Trafford, or somewhere else, a couple of years down the line.''

The South African police on Saturday agreed that it is ready to assist their Indian counterparts in the on going investigations regarding the South African match-fixing scandal, 15 days after the Delhi police rocked the cricket world with the allegations against the South African captain Hansie Cronje.

A South African police spokesman told the media in Pretoria that they had not had the access to copies of the tapes said to be conversations between the sacked South African skipper Hansie Cronje and an Indian bookie.

Meanwhile the South African Government on Saturday announced that the judicial enquiry into the allegations would be set up soon and the name of the head of the panel would shortly be announced.