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Pakistani Cricketers ‘Framed’ By Indian Bookies?
September 3, 2010, 7:01 PM IST
International Cricket Council chief executive Haroon Lorgat says the body is taking the allegations against Pakistani cricketers very seriously.
By Tripti Lahiri
On Monday India Real Time looked at the Indian angle to allegations in a British tabloid that top Pakistani cricketers had helped rig matches.
A 35-year-old British man, Mazhar Majeed, at the center of the scandal sparked by The News of the World article on Sunday, had said he had taken money from “an Indian party” and instructed senior members of Pakistan’s team to bowl no-balls at specified times.
“They pay me for information,” the newspaper quoted Mr. Majeed as saying. The News of the World is owned by News Corp., which also owns the Wall Street Journal.
Betting is big business in India. One Indian lawyer told Reuters that illegal betting was rife in India and that a one day cricket game between Indian and Pakistan could draw as much as $20 million in illegal bets.
On Friday, the International Cricket Council said that three Pakistani cricketers, Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, had been charged with various cricketing offences and “provisionally suspended” as the world cricketing body investigates the charges against them. The players could face a lifetime ban from cricket if the charges are upheld by an ICC tribunal.
Now a Pakistani diplomat in Britain is saying he believes the Pakistani players were set up by Indian bookies.
“This Majeed chap allegedly defrauded Indian bookies. So they instigated a sort of sting operation through their sources,” said Wajid Shamsul Hasan, high commissioner of Pakistan in the U.K., on the Indian cable news channel NDTV. “I smell a *** in it. I don’t think any charge will stick on them…the cricketers said they have not been involved in anything or anything that can be called hanky-panky.”
Mr. Hasan also suggested the cricket regulatory body was “playing to the gallery” by suspending the cricketers.
Haroon Lorgat, the South African ICC chief has told reporters that he “may want to differ with the high commissioner on that,” adding that the body takes corruption charges very seriously.
In an ICC statement Mr. Lorgat also said, “It is important, however, that we do not pre-judge the guilt of these three players. That is for the independent tribunal alone to decide.”
Pakistani Cricketers ‘Framed’ By Indian Bookies? - India Real Time - WSJ