‘ICC had probed Sami’s 17-ball over in Lanka’

Virk, the former superintendent with CBI who produced a report on corruption in cricket in 2000, is one of five men entrusted with keeping tabs on the players and the bookies who try to get in touch with them during a match.

The ICC Security Managers — all with either army or police backgrounds — are spread across the 10 Test-playing nations. Their tasks extend from regulating entry to the dressing room by using close-circuit cameras on match days to monitoring the activities of players both inside and outside the ground.

One interesting innovation is the visitors’ entry slips, which, once used for a period of time can’t be used again, simply because it turns pink.

Their life has also been made a little easy after the ban on cell phones inside the dressing room came into place. While that has reduced the chances of match-fixing to an extent, what happens outside the ground is something they are racking their brains out to tackle.

However, they may have hit on a solution. During the recent one-dayer in Visakhapatnam, the police drew up a list of three bookies and handed over the details to the security manager. They are marked men now and if any of them is seen hovering near a match centre, the inference wouldn’t be hard to draw.