Dec 9, 2008

Sports - Cricket;Bookies are running amok in ICL: Roebuck

Noted cricket writer Peter Roebuck of Australia has urged the BCCI to join hands with the 'rebel' Indian Cricket League for the sake of uprooting corruption from the Twenty20 leagues which he believes were in the clutches of the bookmakers.

"Conversations with Indian Cricket League players confirm that the bookmakers are running amok in the rebel league, and it'd be the height of folly to assume that the Indian Premier League has remained intact," Roebuck wrote in the 'Sydney Morning Herald'.

"Conversations with IPL players suggest that the official brand is equally vulnerable to outside forces. No stone must be left unturned to rid the game of malefactors," he said.

Roebuck praised the ICL authorities for confronting the challenge. "Before the competition began, (ICL) officials asked the ICC to provide corruption officers to supervise the contests but the game's governing body pointed out that it had no jurisdiction over a breakaway domestic tournament and advised ICL to make its own arrangements.

"To that end, officers were appointed. Officials were amazed to learn cricketers could be offered USD 40,000 merely to score five runs or fewer in the 10th over of an innings... At least, the ICL confronted the challenge. It could easily have let things roll along. The IPL includes numerous players of untarnished reputation entitled to be treated with respect and protected from the unsavoury. To that end, the BCCI and IPL need to step up their anti-corruption activities. They could start by talking to ICL officials, and obtaining from them the names and numbers of the identified "businessmen"," he said.

No comments: