Betting scandal leaves cricket's bosses groping in the dark

The executive board of the International Cricket Council (ICC), which holds a two-day session in Christchurch from Sunday, is undecided how to resolve the sport's biggest crisis since the ``bodyline'' controversy six decades ago.

``We mean business, but the modalities have to be worked out,'' said ICC president Jagmohan Dalmiya, who will not attend the meeting because of a bereavement in the family.

``We will have to decide whether a commission should be set up because committees don't have the power sometimes. And if it's a commission there will be legal implications.''

Dalmiya, who is determined to change the ICC's image of a lethargic and laid-back body, concedes it will not be easy to get to the root of the scandal.

``We have to avoid the situation where if any player plays a rash stroke he's in the dock,'' he said. ``It's better not to nab the culprits than hurt an innocent even 20 percent.''

Dalmiya dismissed criticism that an ICC probe would prove futile since the guilty would never come forward voluntarily and proving any charges would be extremely difficult.

``Certain players have come forward and certain people have been identified. You cannot say we are fighting a ghost,'' he said.

Dalmiya, a former Indian cricket board secretary, knows the perils that lie ahead.

It was he who roped in a renowned judge to probe Test allrounder Manoj Prabhakar's allegations last year that an unnamed team-mate offered him 25,000 dollars to play badly in a one-day match in Sri Lanka in 1994.

Yeshwant Chandrachud, the former head of India's Supreme Court, not only absolved all Indian cricketers of any wrongdoing, but the Indian board filed a suit against Prabhakar and the magazine which carried his allegations.

This, however, did not discourage Pakistan from launching it's own inquiry when Australian stars Mark Waugh, Shane Warne and Tim May accused Pakistan captain Salim Malik of offering bribes to play badly in a Test match in 1994.

The matter remains unresolved even though an interim report of the Pakistan Cricket Board found evidence against Malik, Wasim Akram and Ijaz Ahmed and wanted them out of international cricket till the inquiry was completed.

Akram finds himself back as Pakistan's captain and Ijaz remains a crucial member of the team as a separate judicial commission headed by a judge of the Lahore High Court continues it's investigations.

The issue was further complicated when Warne and Waugh, who accused Malik of bribing them, themselves admitted last month they sold weather and pitch information to an Indian bookmaker during a tour of Sri Lanka.

The Australian Cricket Board's admission it hid the facts for four years caused an uproar and encouraged Pakistan to reopen investigations against Warne and Waugh.

The Australians were not the only ones to point fingers at Malik. His Pakistani team-mates Basit Ali and Rashid Latif walked out of an African tour in 1995 saying Malik, the then-captain, was involved with bookmakers.

The seed of suspicion that cricket was not clean was sown much earlier in 1991 when India accused organisers of Sharjah tournaments of a pro-Pakistani bias, and refused to play in the popular desert venue for four years.

The Indians, who lost regularly to their arch-rivals at Sharjah since Javed Miandad's famous last-ball six in the 1986 Australasia Cup final, were convinced Dubai bookmakers were hand-in-hand with the organisers.

``It was not clean,'' a former Indian cricketer said of Sharjah matches. ``You could sense that something was wrong somewhere, although I hear things have improved a lot there.''

England's Adam Hollioake said he had been promised millions by a bookmaker during the four-nation Sharjah tournament in 1997 for revealing information on teams, an offer the player said he declined.