ECB chief warns spot-fixing spectre will return

LONDON: Chairman of England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) Giles Clarke has warned that the spectre of spot-fixing will return in cricket Last week’s dramatic events in Southwark Crown Court, where Salman Butt, Muhammad Asif and Muhammad Amir were convicted for spot-fixing, were a positive moment for cricket.

He warned that radical changes will have to follow for those who play and administer it.

“There was nothing triumphal at all about what took place,” he says. “It was a personal tragedy for some of the individuals and it was not a great moment for the game. It is going to be hard for us as a sport as these issues will return. Every time there is a dramatic, unexpected result, will it be given credence it deserves?

A dramatic overturning against odds is one of the reasons people watch and love cricket, but that can be undermined. And that is the absolute tragedy.”

The next act in drama surrounding the alleged match-fixing is when former Essex seamer Mervyn Westfield will stand trial in January, accused of bowling deliberate wides in a Pro40 game against Durham in 2009 in a spot-fixing scam.

Westfield is charged with the same offences as Butt and his former team-mates, conspiracy to cheat at gambling and conspiracy to accept corrupt payments. The case will raise same questions for English domestic cricket that haunt the international game.

Clarke says he believes the whole game, not just in Pakistan, has to accept it is under threat. He warned that England and Pakistani players have a responsibility to conduct their Test, ODI & Twenty20 matches in UAE in January, February 2012 without incident.

“I shall be in UAE and I am sure my new Pakistani counterpart will be there, and...the two boards will want that to be a very competitive series played in the right spirit with complete integrity and clarity. I don’t think we have got an endemic problem across the entirety of game, but that doesn’t make any difference to the challenge we face.”

That work will begin with changes to rules governing betting by players.

He praised the players’ union, Professional Cricketers’ Association, for its anti-corruption work, but players banned from gambling on cricket may now have to end all relationships with betting.

He stressed that corruption is not a problem confined to the subcontinent. The explosion of T20 cricket may have raised integrity issues, but Butt and his peers corrupted a Test match at Lord’s, and an English limited-overs game is next in the dock.

Clarke praised the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) for their rebuilding work since last summer when former chairman Ejaz Butt, who watched the Lord’s Test unfold from Clarke’s box, was in denial about the gravity of the case when he accused England of match-fixing.

“I am very impressed by the start made by new chairman Zaka Ashraf, he has got to rebuild the image of Pakistan cricket and we have got to help him. World cricket is a group of colleagues and friends; we compete, but decline or damage of one of us damages us all.”

Copyright PPI (Pakistan Press International), 2011