Long-buried secrets stink - Parkinson on Warne and Waugh (14 December 1998)

14 December 1998

Long-buried secrets stink - Parkinson on Warne and Waugh

By Michael Parkinson

AUSTRALIAN television showed a film about Shane Warne. He took the reporter for a ride in his Maserati, escorted her through the designer dream of his million-dollar home. He was happy and relaxed, charming and funny, wearing his success easily like an old sweater. He was the golden boy fulfilling the Aussie dream; Jack the lad who became a superstar. Good on yer Warney.

Today that same man is revealed as someone who risked career, lifestyle and reputation by getting involved with a bookmaker for a few quid. The £2,000 he received for his services might make him the best-paid weather forecaster in the world, but set against an income in the region of £500,000-plus a year, it makes the indiscretion even more reprehensible and grubby.

The same goes for Mark Waugh. He might not be the icon Warne is but he is a long way removed from the kind of desperate situation where you risk all for a couple of grand. The Australians have been quick to draw the line between what Waugh and Warne did and allegations of match fixing in Pakistan. It won't wash. I am not saying either culprit would throw a match. But they have done business with the kind of people who might be involved with match fixing, and as such are tainted. Moreover it doesn't take much imagination to see the situation in Pakistan against an overall picture of Third World poverty and a more general acceptance of corruption that we pretend to tolerate.

I am not condoning what might have happened on the Subcontinent, merely suggesting that cricketers from what we would like to think of as more developed countries have even less excuse for taking back-handers. The Australian prime minister, John Howard, said that "with hindsight" the decision by the Australian Cricket Board to cover up the scandal was perhaps not the right one. Mr Howard is mistaken. It was a bad decision at the time. With hindsight it is even worse.

Mark Taylor said: "The ramifications would have been the same if it had been made public at the time." Wrong again. Had it been dealt with when it happened it could have been judged in a proper context. As it is, because it was covered up it had to be unearthed. Long-buried secrets stink. The revelation poses more questions than it answers. The Australian board say they will set up an inquiry to ascertain if any more of their Test squad have been keeping dodgy company but they won't delve further into the Warne/Waugh affair. Why not? Only a thorough investigation of their misdemeanours will suffice. There are important questions to be answered like why, if it was merely a misguided and foolish act by two players who temporarily took leave of their senses, was it given the status of a dead body.

How were the players found out? Did they cough or were they shopped? Why wasn't the bookmaker questioned? It seems the Australian Cricket Board accepted what the players told them without corroboration. It might be they told the truth. On the other hand the bookmaker might have been an important witness in subsequent investigations.

Perhaps the most extraordinary decision in a cock-up of magnificent proportion was made by David Richards, chief executive of the International Cricket Council. He was told "in confidence" what had happened and he colluded in the cover-up. As a former chief executive of the Australian Cricket Board he finds himself with a lot of explaining to do.

It will be interesting to observe what happens at the forthcoming meeting of the ICC in New Zealand in January. If the ICC have any clout at all they should call Richards and the Australian Cricket Board to account. They should order a full investigation into the relationship between Warne, Waugh and the bookmaker and the reason why the Australian Board tried to conceal the truth, or at least their version of it.

In the final analysis Waugh and Warne have scarred the reputation of a team with a claim to be Australia's best. The dreadful irony is that the two cricketers who provided the genius required to make a good team into a great one are those who have soiled its status. More culpable, perhaps, are those men in charge of Australian cricket at the time, who by not coming clean turned a cow pat into a dunghill.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)