Mark Waugh and Shane Warne should have been suspended in 1995 after being found guilty of receiving money from illegal bookmakers. This is one of the findings of an independent inquiry into players' conduct in Australia, which was released today.

Rob O'Regan, a former Chairman of the Queensland Criminal Justice Commission, was asked to examine all aspects of gambling within Australian cricket, match-fixing and bribery-related matters and possible contact between players and officials and gambling interests. This was initiated following the revelation last December of the disciplinary action against Warne and Waugh almost four years earlier, which had remained undisclosed by the Australian Cricket Board until media pressure forced a public announcement.

O'Regan found no evidence of any Australian player involved in match-fixing or not playing to his merits. In relation to the ACB's handling of the Waugh/Warne matter, O'Regan was highly critical of the Board, saying the following about the fines imposed:

``In my opinion this punishment was inadequate. It did not reflect the seriousness of what they had done. In Warne's case the fine of $ 8000 did little more than deprive him of the sum of $ US5000 he had received from the bookmaker. I do not think it is possible to explain their conduct away as the result merely of naivity or stupidity. They must have known that it is wrong to accept money from, and supply information to, a bookmaker whom they also knew as someone who betted on cricket. Otherwise they would have reported the incident to team management long before they were found out in February 1995. In behaving as they did they failed lamentably to set the sort of example one might expect from senior players and role models for many young cricketers.''

O'Regan did not recommend that any further action could be taken against the two players, saying: ``In any event, the ACB now has no power to reconsider the matter and impose any more severe penalties. The players acknowledge that what they did was wrong and they have undertaken not to engage in such conduct again. In these circumstances it would not be productive to discuss these incidents further.''

Mr O'Regan's recommendations included the following:

• The ACB should review the manner in which it deals with serious disciplinary matters.
• If a player is found guilty in such proceedings, that finding and any penalty imposed should be made public.
• Consideration be given for suspensions, particularly life suspensions as punishment for serious offences involving match fixing and bribery.
• All players to be counselled concerning penalties in regard to untoward contact with gambling interests.

During the two months over which the inquiry took place, O'Regan interviewed 64 people in investigating any improper conduct by Australian players in relation to bribery, match-fixing or other related activities. He said in his report that he found no basis for recommending any disciplinary action against any player or official. He did detail in his report alleged instances of Australian players being approached by figures involved in gambling between 1992 and 1998. The earliest incident being an approach to Dean Jones in Sri Lanka in 1992, the most recent being Mark Taylor's report of a telephone call in Rawalpindi last October by a person seeking pitch and weather information.

The identities of persons said to have made approaches to players have not been made public at this stage for legal reasons, but are contained in a chapter of the report not made public but tendered to the ACB for discussion at their next directors meeting for decision on what action to take. The identity of an ex-Indian player who approached Jones in 1992, as well as that of an ex-Pakistan player who approached Allan Border in England in 1993, and an Australian bookmaker and a greyhound trainer who spoke to Ricky Ponting at a greyhound meeting in Sydney in 1997, are discussed in the confidential report.

The complete public report of the ACB Player Conduct Inquiry, completed by Mr O'Regan and released by the ACB this afternoon, is on-line in the Australian Cricket Board website, hosted by CricInfo.