The Australian team management has filed a report with the ICC's Anti-Corruption and Security Unit after a player was approached by a man suspected of links to illegal bookmaking. Cricinfo has learned the approach was made in the bar of the team's London hotel, the Royal Kensington Garden, following Australia's Ashes defeat at Lord's in July.
So let me understand this
- There is a lot od chatter and rumor about the integrity of the IPL hosted in South Africa. Sufficient enough for the ACSU and, in turn the ICC, to be concerned.
- Logic would dictate that more stringent measures would be put in place given the ICC concerns and the fact that it is a World Cup. But no, there is a report of players being approached by bookmakers during the World Twenty20 held in England.
- Such things happen, but surely there is now a water tight case for the ACSU to put together measures to "provide a professional, permanent and secure infrastructure to act as a long term deterrent to conduct of a corrupt nature prejudicial to the interests of the game of cricket."
- And yet, after the Lords Test, there is the report that an Australia player was approached by a bookie. In the team hotel no less.
Has there ever been a stronger case for organizational incompetence? And doesn't the BCCI stand vindicated in that it did not invest the $1.2 million in paying an organization that is incapable of executing even the role it was tasked for in the first place?
4 comments:
If the trport is to go by, it happened twice in England this year and once in Sri Lanka.
I think ACSU is ill-equipped to tackle the issue it was created for and is understaffed.
I have been to a few series in India and the standard procedure has been to block the entire floor where the players stay. I have encountered this in Kanpur, Chandigarh, Jaipur and some other places.
Now if you are a guest staying in the same hotel, you can easily bump into one of the cricketers in the lobby/bar and I think it's difficult to stop those elements.
Som,
For a body that prevented Shahrukh Khan from entering the player dug out during IPL 1, it seems a stretch that they cannot quarantine players during high profile tournaments.
And the funny thing is, it is not even as if they were caught unawares.
Methinks this is the ACSU raising the bogeyman because of missing out on the IPL pie.
Jonathan makes a valid point ( in the comments section of the previous post). He says, and I quote "My point was simply that the question isn't whether the ACSU should have anything to say, it's whether they are saying and doing anythign helpful. If "covering" the IPL (beyond what the BCCI presumably did do) is essential/beneficial for cricket as a whole, then why aren't they going out of their way to obtain co-operation, rather than sitting around waiting for fees. (It certainly appears to me that the agenda is a slice of the pie.) Neither they nor ICC sources can reasonably claim that the ACSU needs to be involved, but then offer services like a contractor. If funding is an issue, then work it out separately, even if the sources are basically the same."
Cheers,
I'm not sure I like the idea of complete quarantine unless strictly necessary, and it certainly isn't what you'd expect if the ACSU were succesful in being a deterrant.
On one level, players being approached is not a problem unless they accept offers. The ACSU could argue that their existence has led to players reporting these events rather than expecting to get away with fixing. Of course, it would be better to see ACSU being active enough to stop even the bookies thinking they might get away with it.
Jonathan,
Given the circumstances and the subsequent paranoia, a quarantine would have been in order.
The more I look at these selective leaks, the more it seems to me that the ACSU is real miffed at losing out on the IPL pie. That coupled with either organizational indifference to the task at hand or organizational lethargy.
Cheers,
Post a Comment