The issue that won’t go away

With so many skeletons also popping out of long-forgotten cupboards in the ICC corridors, the general public interest transferred curiosity to something far more demanding and centre stage. Just who was running this show, bookies or administrators? And where was the game heading? Who could be trusted? All good questions that demanded answers as the top admin guys battled to rediscover the truth.

Only the ICC had so often, and for so long, swept the debris of their own culpability into the corner, they did not quite know how to start telling the truth. Maybe they didn’t recognise what the truth really was.

It was an image which had slowly started to change before Colombo a month ago when Malcolm Gray, the sharp-eyed, articulate ICC president, did his little public relations act. There was praise for the organisers of a well-run tournament and the anti-corruption unit as it was seen to be largely free of the felonious bookmakers and their ugly pimps.

There was also praise, despite West Indian interference, of the security system put in place by the ACU. The security had a job to do but the West Indian management did not see it that way and this caused a rumpus.

Despite such annoyances, and claims that there were crooked players who were signalling ‘known bookmakers’ associates’ of how a dismissal would be made, the accuracy of such claims has to be doubted. In most cases the ACU dismissed the claims as being deliberately mischievous or creative sensation as they carefully monitored the situation. As Gray said, the lessons from the tournament would help the ACU monitor the World Cup.

Gray pointed out how team and team management discipline was important if the ACU was to efficiently carry out its job. Colombo was different to South Africa. In Colombo the teams were all in one hotel and surveillance and security was tight; in South Africa the tournament is spread and each side will have a security team.

There is an immediate opportunity — the consecutive tours by Sri Lanka and Pakistan — for a test run and the ICC’s ACU agents are busy setting up their network to hunt down those unctuous types who would deliberately spoil an event to make a few extra dollars or rupees.

Former Sri Lanka captain Arjuna Ranatunga blamed the boards in the various South Asian countries for soft-peddling on known match malpractices. Ranatunga, also investigated on similar corruption allegations along with Aravinda de Silva, said personal experience had taught him that players could be ‘‘controlled by the right people’’.

Ranatunga blamed the boards of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka for throwing out a proposal by the ACU to have all players and administrators involved in gambling, or known gaming or casino estabishments, barred from the game. In this case it was the boards to blame and not the players for efforts to clean up the game.

Perhaps he could also point at the countries that are against players having a voice in the game run from the boardrooms. A proposal put to the ICC meeting in Colombo was rejected by the four Asian mandarins and South Africa. The argument is that the boards are a little edgy at the Federation of International Cricket Players’ Associations being allowed to discuss such matters as security, image rights and sponsorship.

The five boards felt it was wrong for the international body to have a say. Does this suggest there are some boards which want to get more money for themselves than those who earn it for them? An interesting one. So, where does the honesty start?