With top players under scanner, bookies tap women, Associates
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NEW DELHI: Media stings and arrests of players in recent years have helped counter the activities of potential match-fixers among the leading teams. However, there is concern such elements could now try to influence women’s cricket and Associate member teams.
To guard against this, the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) anticorruption unit has briefed the women’s teams about possible approaches by shady elements ahead of the World Twenty20 starting on Tuesday.
“We have shown women players pictures and also made visual presentations of suspects. We have told them ‘these are people who may come to you, praise your game and then try to corrupt you. So, you have to maintain a distance and report if things like this happen’,” ICC CEO Dave Richardson told HT on Monday.
HT has learnt that the anti-corruption unit is taking elaborate steps for this WT20 as most of the alleged fixers or suspects in its list are from India. ICC believes it is because of its education programme that corrupt elements have turned their focus to women’s cricket and associate countries such as Hong Kong. In January, ICC suspended Irfan Ahmed, a Hong Kong all-rounder of Pakistan origin, for failing to disclose an offer to fix.
ICC anti-corruption unit head Ronnie Flanagan had said on Sunday that members of an international team were being probed.
However, Richardson said investigation didn’t mean anybody or any team was actually involved in fixing.
“Flanagan said one of the teams is under investigation. We need to take his comment in perspective. First of all, we should not speculate that it involves (or) there’s any matchfixing or anything going on with particular players or teams,” he said.