by By Peter Deeley
JAVED BURKI, chairman of Pakistan's ad hoc cricket board, admitted
last night that allegations of attempted match-fixing by the country's
players were "most serious" after he had been presented with evidence
in the hands of the International Cricket Council.
Burki had just been given copies of statements provided by Australian
players following their tour of Pakistan last autumn. In London
earlier he met David Richards, chief executive of the ICC, who are
carrying out their own investigations.
Apart from agreeing that the private meeting was "constructive", few
details were made public, but Burki said as he left Lord's that he was
confident the Board of Control for Cricket in Pakistan "will take
swift action on the allegations".
Burki will summon a meeting of PCCB members when he returns to the
board headquarters in Lahore this week. If the allegations are
substantiated the board could take Draconian measures against the
players named.
The ICC are still refusing to reveal the precise allegations
At the most extreme this could include lifetime bans from all
international cricket. The ICC are still refusing to reveal the
precise allegations or which players are named in the dossiers which
were forwarded to their Lord's headquarters by the Australian Cricket
Board.
But it is known that Australian spinners Tim May and Shane Warne have
claimed they were approached before the first Test in Karachi last
September and offered money to "bowl poorly". Pakistan won by one
wicket but both say they rejected the bribes.
Mark Waugh has also said he was offered money to throw away his wicket
in the game. He scored 20 and 61 but says he refused to listen to the
would-be briber.
In a separate incident, Dean Jones has told how he was approached by a
bookmaker's agent during a tour of Sri Lanka in 1993 and offered
payment if he would pass on details of the strengths and weaknesses of
various sides.
Former Australian captain Allan Border has alleged that he was offered
#500,000 by former Pakistan captain Mushtaq Mohammad to lose the
Edgbaston Test during the last tour of England. Mushtaq says it was a
joke.
Sarfraz has been at the heart of various *** allegations
At the weekend Sarfraz Nawaz, the former Pakistan Test bowler who is
now a sports adviser to the Pakistan government, said some players
were bribed to lose the 1992 one-day international at Trent Bridge,
which England won by 198 runs.
Sarfraz has been at the heart of various *** allegations against
some members of the present Pakistan team. He revealed that the
present manager, Intikhab Alam, and the then captain, Imran Khan, had
had to forestall threats of a betting coup in a game against India in
Sharjah.
He was instrumental in getting a federal government anti-corruption
squad to investigate suggestions of match-fixing and maintains that
current Test players' telephones have been tapped and bank accounts
scrutinised during the probe.
Salim Malik, the Pakistan captain, has strongly refuted allegations
that he was involved in attempted ***. I understand that Burki
asked the ICC why the Pakistan authorities had not been informed of
the Australian allegations for three months and then not until the
matter had been leaked to the media.
The view within the Pakistan board is that someone is attempting to
destabilise their power and the standing of the team - and that that
person may well be close to the government of Prime Minister Benazir
Bhutto.