Zimbabwe Cricket Union president to attend ICC meeting

THE president of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union, Peter Chingoka, leaves for London today, to attend this week's special meeting of the International Cricket Council's Executive Board. Fireworks are expected at this meeting since at least one national cricket chief has threatened to reveal the names of the match-fixing culprits.

The emergency meeting to be held at Lord's on Tuesday and Wednesday, has been called at a time when cricket is facing its biggest crisis ever. South Africa's cricket boss, Ali Bacher, alleged recently that two matches at last year's World Cup had been fixed.

Before his departure, Chingoka told The Standard that the meeting would focus mainly on the betting and match fixing scandal that is threatening to tear the sport apart.

"We will discuss other issues such as the commercial aspects of the sport, but clearly, our main agenda will be the betting and match-fixing scandal," said Chingoka.

He added: "We will be looking at setting up a definite set of ethics and making sure that a clear judicial system or way of dealing with wrongdoers is established and also the method of punishment to be meted out to the culprits."

The grave allegations made by Bacher came after the sacking of South African skipper, Hansie Cronje, after he admitted to having taken money from bookmakers. More serious, however, are the match-fixing allegations levelled by Indian police at Cronje and three other South African cricketers.

Chingoka reiterated that as far as he was concerned, Zimbabwean cricketers were not involved in any match-fixing.

"I am not aware of any wrongdoing on the part of our players and like everyone else, I will be waiting to see what comes out of the investigations and out of this week's ICC meeting."

The ZCU president stressed that the crisis had to be dealt with promptly in order to stop the rot.

Sharing Chingoka's sentiments was ZCU chief executive, Dave Ellman Brown, and ex-national team coach, Dave Houghton.

"Its a cancer that we have to get out of the sport. It has to be dealt with firmly and I am sure the meeting at Lord's will come up with something that will go a long way towards ridding the sport of this big problem," said Ellman Brown.

He added that punishment meted out to those found guilty of match-fixing had to be severe and had to include the possibility of a life ban.