Kapil says ban cricket for six months, clear mess

He added: “This is not the time to do sensational stories but time for all to get disturbed by what is happening. My appeal to them and all others who claim to have any evidence is to give it to the government so that it helps in the probe. Let the guilty be punished, no matter how big the names are. We all have a moral responsibility towards our country to help clean this mess.

“The reason why I say stop playing cricket for six months till we get to the bottom of all this,” said Kapil, “is that there is no point playing the game in such suspicious circumstances. Imagine somebody drops a catch or gets out and you are told he has done it for some extraneous consideration. What do you think my reaction as a coach would be, if I am told that so and so player is not giving his best?”

ENS adds:The Government today announced that it would table the Chandrachud committee report on betting and match-fixing in the two Houses of Parliament but remained non-committal on the demand for ordering a CBI inquiry.

The match-fixing scandal which has rocked the cricket world today found its echo in Parliament. Replying to the demand for a CBI inquiry, Home Minister L K Advani agreed that people both within and outside the country were worried over the latest developments. “But as you know, there is a separate ministry of Sports. I’ll request it to conduct an inquiry into the events,” he said, adding, “I think it’ll be appropriate to table the Chandrachud committee report.”

On the issue of ordering a CBI inquiry, he said he could not do so as the investigative agency was outside the Home Ministry’s purview. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan joined in by saying that he’d request the Sports Minister to make a statement in the House tomorrow.

The match-fixing scandal had its echo in the Rajya Sabha too with elders demanding a thorough and impartial CBI inquiry as, they said, the Chandrachud committee report was a “whitewash.” The issue, which came up in the form of a special mention by Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi, turned into a veritable discussion on cricket, its money-spinning potential and “deleterious” influence on the youth of the country.

The Hansie Cronje affair was “only a tip of the iceberg” of a scam which ran deep, Kalmadi said, quoting South African cricket supremo Ali Bacher as saying the Indian subcontinent was the “hotbed of match-fixing and betting.”