An ABC documentary has claimed the International Cricket Council was aware that alleged matchfixer Mazhar Majeed was a suspect person before Pakistan’s controversial tour of Australia last summer, but failed to inform Cricket Australia.
On Pakistan’s recent August/September tour of England, the cricket world was disgraced when newspaper News of the World exposed agent Majeed discussing spot-fixing options for a coming Test and naming Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir as being in on the scam.
Majeed was also secretly filmed by News of the World bragging about the money he had made in an alleged fix in last January’s Test between Australia and Pakistan (won by Australia) at the SCG.
ABC’s Four Corners Program alleged on Monday night that the ICC was aware that Majeed was a person of interest before the tour of Australia, yet kept Cricket Australia in the dark.
It also claimed the international body was not investigating the Test.
ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat was reluctant to discuss the matter of whether the cricketing body should have divulged their information on Majeed to Cricket Australia.
“These are leads that we have to follow through and be quite confident before we make allegations and it was the subject of an ongoing investigation and we weren’t in a position to make any allegations,” he said.
Asked had the ICC been investigating the agent Majeed and some of the Pakistani players, Lorgat replied: “Well it’s a question I’d prefer not to answer. It’s part of the investigation.
“We were not satisfied of the extent of his activities and we needed to be quite confident before we levelled any accusations.”
Australian captain Ricky Ponting admitted he has growing concerns about whether his team’s incredible victory over Pakistan in Sydney was as genuine as it seemed.
“I probably have a few more doubts now that there have been some allegations made about some of the finer points and littler things that happened during that Sydney Test match,” Ponting said.
“The one thing I’m very protective of though is the performance that we put up that day … touch wood the Sydney Test match is not one that has anything untoward happening out of it because I really feel that coming off the ground that day, that’s one of the proudest moments of my career.”
While Ponting has his doubts about the legitimacy of the Test, Cricket Australia chairman James Sutherland told the program he’s yet to be convinced the match was fixed, despite Majeed’s admissions.
“That’s scuttlebutt that is to be proven. I trust that is the subject now of a proper investigation by the ICC and we can get to the bottom of that, because if there is any truth to that then that’s obviously something of great concern to cricket fans and cricket administrators all over the world,” Sutherland said.
However Four Corners revealed the ICC aren’t investigating the Sydney Test and won’t unless “credible evidence comes forward.”
“We are not specifically investigating the Sydney Test. We’ve kept it open, we’ve concluded in the end that it was a dysfunctional team, but we haven’t got sufficient evidence,” he said.
“We haven’t got any other evidence (other than Majeed’s bragging) to back that up, we need to put the pieces of the puzzle together before we can be comfortable that the Test needs to be investigated.”
The documentary also alleged that the Pakistan Cricket Board was put on notice by the International Cricket Council that some of its players were behaving suspiciously before the team left for their controversial tour of England.
It claimed that PCB chairman Ijaz Butt was alerted by the ICC that they were suspicious about alleged corruption.
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