Captains report fixers to ICC
Three international captains have been approached by fixers in the past six weeks and the International Cricket Council is currently investigating seven live cases in the battle against corruption.
The news highlights the challenge facing Alex Marshall, the new general manager of the ICC’S anticorruption unit (ACU), who joined in September having previously been Hampshire’s chief constable.
Graeme Cremer, captain of Zimbabwe, reported a suspicious approach before a Test match against West Indies earlier this month. Sarfraz Ahmed, captain of Pakistan, also alerted the unit to an illegal approach from a potential fixer before a one-day series in Sri Lanka. The identity of the third captain is not known.
The Daily Telegraph understands all three reported the approaches to the unit within an hour, which the authorities believe shows their
Up front: Sarfraz Ahmed told of an approach by a fixer before Pakistan played Sri Lanka education programmes are working, and that all contact by fixers was made away from cricket grounds.
The ICC is also using new powers that allow it to seize mobile phones to help investigate the latest cases. Players will be banned for two years if they refuse to hand over their mobiles. The sums being offered by fixers are believed to run as high as £150,000 and the disparity in some countries between playing international cricket and Twenty20 is a factor that criminal gangs are looking to exploit. Sources indicate that one international player claimed to have earned £3million in a year in Twenty20 as opposed to £100,000 if he had played for his country.
There is also increased focus on youth tournaments and women’s matches that are streamed on social media platforms. During the under17s World Cup in Malaysia recently around £7million was gambled on legal markets, bets which the ACU believed were laid by corrupt gangs involved in illegal gambling in Asia.
The worry for the ICC is that fixers are grooming young players at junior tournaments to become the fixers of the future.