Posts Tagged ‘Match fixing’

3 results.
Mar10

It’s a cover up

by wasim on March 10th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Posted In: Cricket, Cricket Pakistan

The Pakistan Cricket Board has barred former captains Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan from the national team indefinitely for behaviour they say contributed to Pakistan’s poor performance on its recent tour of Australia.

PCB on Wednesday also imposed one-year bans on Shoaib Malik and Rana Naved after implementing the recommendations of an inquiry committee formed to evaluate Pakistan’s dismal performance against Australia in December and January.

Malik and Naved were also fined two million rupees, wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal was handed a fine of three million rupees and Umar Akmal, younger brother of Kamran, was fined two million rupees.

Shahid Afridi was fined 3 million rupees (US$35,200) for ball tampering during the one-day series against Australia.

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For the time being an average fan will be satisfied that finally justice has been done and player’s power has been eradicated from Pakistan cricket.

In my opinion the whole inquiry process has been a huge cover up and in a few months all of these players will get restored and their fines will be overturned because of the following reasons.

 

  • The inquiry process was carried out by an in house committee rather than an independent Judicial inquiry like the Justice Qayyum inquiry. After Qayyum’s inquiry all the statements given by players, the whole proceedings of the inquiry alongwith the evidence presented were made public as a result nobody had any doubt about the fairness of the process and nobody had any sympathy with the players. Even though the recommendations of the current inquiry committee have been implemented but their are several loop holes deliberately left in the report because of which I strongly believe that all the players will be able to make a come back. The central contracts expired on Dec 31′st legally the players can go to the court and get the fines revoked because they were no longer employed by PCB when these fines were announced.  Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousaf  can get their bans over turned from any court as their stance has been vindicated by the inquiry committee’s report so why they are being punished? It is not clear as of yet.

 

  • Questions will be raised in the media why PCB didn’t nipped the evil in the bud when these players were showing rogue behavior on different tours and were under performing to pull the legs of each other, Since the details of the statements made by the accused have not been made public, does it mean that the top brass was also involved in promoting factionalism for their own vested interests and tried to cover up their own role by keeping the proceedings of the inquiry secret. 

 

  • Through out the last year several players of Pakistan team and at times the whole team has been accused of match fixing, even Mr Butt acknowledged that match fixing is prevailant but can’t be proved, since the inquiry committee was not independent and it’s proceedings have been kept secret and the fact that PCB didn’t do anything to curtail player’s power in the last two years, in fact on many occasions they encouraged it and protected the rogue players,  hence it is fair to believe that the top management was itself nurturing a corrupt culture, hence it is fair to believe that PCB deliberately covered up the evidence regarding the involvement of it’s executives in various mutiny’s and their role in mismanaging the serious situations on several occasions.

 

  • Younis Khan refused to be a part of a corrupt setup and is only getting punished for that sole reason. In his case only PCB officials were guilty, they never supported him because apparently it didn’t suited their vested interests and now by punishing him they have covered up their own role. It is quite evident from Younis Khan’s case that PCB’s top brass itself was accomplice with some of the rogue players and was encouraging them against Younis Khan.

 

  • Apparently Afridi has been punished for his ball tampering but I think legally they can’t punish him for one offence twice, I think behind the scenes their is more to it than what meets the eye he has been a central character in all the revolts and mutiny’s since Inzamam.

All the players except Younis Khan deserved this harsh treatment, the players are only puppets they could not have carried out their plans if they didn’t had any official sanction from PCB’s top brass.  Justice has been served to the players but the main culprits (the board officials) are still unpunished and are still controlling the affairs of PCB. The board officials won’t get away with it as very soon the players will hit back at the board and will try to take them down along with them.

The people of Pakistan should demand from PCB to release the full minutes of the proceeding of the inquiry committee alongwith the statements and evidences furnished by all the players and officials.

We deserve to know what was the role of the current management in prolonging this issue, people also deserve to know the real reasons behing the bans imposed on Younis and Yousaf.

I would appeal to the Chief Justice of Pakistan that he should take a suo motto notice of the situation and set up a special judicial commission for this purpose. 

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Aug30

Ashamed to be a Pakistani

by wasim on August 30th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Posted In: Cricket, Cricket Pakistan

This is the first time in my life that I am completely ashamed of being a Pakistani, as a nation we have sold our souls to the devil and sold it cheap, our society is running on a system where only the dishonest, corrupt, and morally bankrupt people thrive and those who have honesty and integrity are left to rot. In every walk of life success and survival depends on corruption. The corrupt system very efficiently eliminates those who show any form of honesty or integrity and the society rejects such people like plague.

The country is being governed in mafia style and is ruled by a thug, the hand picked institutional heads operate like area dons and are given targets to achieve to fill the coffers of God father, PCB has been no exception Musharraf appointed Nasim Ashraf and despite heavy criticism he was never removed, Zardari appointed Ijaz Butt who is unaniomously hated by all the cricket fans in Pakistan and despite so many set backs he continues to retain his position. Through nepotism, favoritism, bribery, jingoism, dirty politics and mismanagement these guys have ruined PCB financially and in the process have also destroyed Pakistan cricket.

I have pointed this out many times before during the last three years that there is a pattern in selection through which PCB top brass controls the outcome of a series, the core group of players continue to get selected no matter what there performance has been. Even though there is always a selection committee but the selection is rigged by either Ijaz Butt or the tour selection committee. Pakistan has rarely played to it’s full strength due to this rigging in the selection process.

Why Ijaz Butt needed to have a dummy chief selector? Why he is selecting the team on every tour, if he is honest and has nothing to do with the corruption then why can’t he let the selectors work independently. There is no precedence of such policies in the entire cricketing world.

In past several of my blogging friends have made fun of me when I used to point out corruption and foul play, some said that I was obssessed about match fixing these players are inherently incapable of winning matches, but I have always maintained that form doesn’t change overnight, a bowler bowls beautifully in one innings and bowls all over the place in the next.

 Akmal brothers at their best have won us many matches recently but look like street players when we lose, Kamran Akmal all of a sudden fails to take simple catches behind stumps and gives too many byes, Omar Gul can’t get his length and line right and bowls too many no balls, Kaneria gifts one full toss every now and then in an over and bowls too many no balls for a spinner. Malik after scoring a quick 20 or 30 suddenly gets out, Misbah finds the strangest ways to get out, Omar Akmal every now and then takes a suicidal run and throws away his wicket, Salman Butt all of a sudden loses his form and looks like a pedesterian player, Afridi can get away with anything, because over the years he has developed a reputation of being brainless when it comes to batting, but I do find it strange that when he wants to bat sensibly he certainly can, he has displayed it many times during this year. The captains through defensive field placements, wrong bowling changes and poor selection on the tour control the outcome of the match.

These guys are experienced and professionals they should have never been allowed to get away with all this hanky panky by just declaring it being unpredictable or unprofessional.

After the Australian tour PCB gave the world an impression that the team’s poor performance was a result of factionalism in the team and covered up all the corruption. It’s not that Sindhis, Punjabis and Pathans can’t get along with each other in Pakistan if there was factionalism in the team it was only due to two factors, one that a few players like Younis Khan wanted to play honestly and with integrity and two, players like Afridi, Malik, Butt and Yousaf wanted to control the team for the lions share. The former never accepted the job as a dummy and all the later played in the hands of PCB and never showed any integrity.

Afridi’s statement that he knew that certain players were fixing matches and had contacts with Majeed is hillarious, the same guy is also his agent and the same guy has also stated that the Odi series against England is also fixed. Why Afridi didn’t raised his voice in the media when he knew that the guy had links with match fixing mafia? Why he retained him as his own agent? Why he accepted Kamran Akmal as his deputy? The selection of Shahzaib and Hafeez despite their failure in T20 WC was done to rig the Odi and T20 series.

PCB will try it’s best to form a shady inquiry committee and will try to save the maximum number of players but corruption will remain as long as long as people like Ijaz Butt and Yawar Saeed are at the helm of PCB.

Players like Miandad, Wasim Akram, Muddassar Nazar and Majid know what is wrong with Pakistan cricket they will never accept a key position. Only desperate people like Mohsin Khan and Waqar Younis will continue to work for PCB, It’s been in the news that the bookie was related to Pakistan’s batting coach Ijaz Ahmad who also has a shady past.

Waqar has always been one of my favorite players and there is no doubt about his abilities as a bowling coach but he has a past, he was appointed as a bowling coach by Sheryaar Khan, but Nasim Ashraf told him that he won’t travel with the team and will only work with the players in the academy, Waqar resigned and surprising his replacement Mushtaq another man with shady past was sent with the team, anybody with little common sense must have realized that these former players with shady past were only hired because of their links with the bookies, Waqar was not allowed to travel with the team because he was hired by the previous administration and the new management wanted to make new deals.

The current administration first appointed Intikhab another guy who have always been in the center of every match fixing controversy but after heavy criticism from the press and public lost his job but continued to get the same pay for doing nothing. Why??

After firing Intikhab they promoted Waqar as the head coach when he threatened PCB that he will tell the Senate’s committee of sports what happened in Sydney.

Ijaz Butt also brought his close associate Yawar Saeed who also have been in center of every match fixing controversy these guys when they come to Pakistan criminal charges should be brought against them and their properties should be confiscated and they should be thrown in jail for bringing shame to the country nothing short of that would be acceptable to the people of Pakistan.

The team management cannot claim that they didn’t knew anything about the activities of players a simple statement by Yawar Saeed that he warned the players about Mazhar Majeed doesnot in any way gives him a clean chit the fact that the players were meeting him and he was staying with the team incriminates Yawar Saeed and the rest of the team management especially when they both Afridi and Yawar Saeed have admitted in their statements that they warned players about Majeed.

It is evident from the facts that the team management created a corrupt culture in the team,  honest players were sidelined and young players were influenced to become corrupt  , Umar Amin and Wahab Riaz were openly recieving gifts from Mazhar Majeed for underperforming, the most sad and disappointing thing out of this crisis for me is the fact that Aamer has also sold his soul to the devil. He was the most promising player since Wasim and Waqar for Pakistan but like many of his other feats in which he overtook his predecessors in corruption also he beat them becuase I don’t think Wasim or Waqar did any corruption when they were this young and new in the team.

Pakistani cricket fans are divided by regionalism and these crooks have taken full advantage of it, this is the time that instead of pointing out how many  corrupt players are from which region it is time to think rationally and attack the root cause of this corruption and that is the corrupt administration and the corrupt heritage of the team.

We will have to disolve this corrupt board and team and rebuild from scratch with all honesty.

It’s only a matter of few weeks that people will start forget this and will start defending these players or will start to find precedences in other countries to justify the acts of our players or start looking for conspiracy theories, I guess we as fans should not defend these morons and should demand the harshest punishment for them because their crime is nothing short of treason.

This time the evidence against Pak players is overwhelming, the only thing PCB will be able to do is that they will limit the matter to spot fixing and will temporarily ban a few players, It”s time for ICC to get more proactive they will have to suspend Pakistan from International cricket for a while until the whole corrupt organization of PCB is disbanded and Pakistan is forced to form a board managed by people who have spotless reputation.

Yes I am a Pakistani and I am asking ICC to suspend Pakistan from playing international cricket that is the only solution to get rid of this menace.

The fans all around the world deserve to watch pure cricket free of any corruption and in it’s true spirit. We don’t want to watch this WWF version of cricket.

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51 Comments
Dec12

Spot fixing Scandal- ACSU failed once again

by wasim on December 12th, 2010 at 10:33 am
Posted In: Cricket, Cricket Pakistan

 

ICC and ACSU were handed over a perfect opportunity to strike a major blow to the illegal betting underworld by the NOTW sting operation but it seems that due to inherent incompetence or limitations they just limited the scope of their investigations to the players and have failed to widen the scope of their investigation by cracking down on the bookmakers.

Punishing a few players is not going to eradicate corruption in cricket, the players are just pawns and are expendables, the real culprits are those who run this underground betting Mafia and those who lure young cricketers into corruption. Unless a few kingpins of this illegal business are brought to justice, corruption will not get eradicated from cricket.

It is naive to believe that Mazhar Majeed was the king pin of this illicit business he was just an operative of a huge a network.

Why so far no arrests have been made of his contacts in Delhi and Dubai. Scotland Yard arrested and interrogated him, ACSU went through all of his phone and travel records but so far the focus of their investigation is only a handful Pakistani players, why with the help of Interpol and member nations they have not hunted down the main bookies who were controlling Mazhar Majeed. There have been several indications made by ACSU that Mazhar was in regular contact with bookies in Delhi and Dubai.

Either their investigation has completely failed or they are not interested in launching a major offensive against the betting mafia.

The ACSU was set up in 2000 after a match-fixing scandal that led to life bans for Test captains Hansie Cronje (South Africa), Mohammad Azharuddin (India) and Salim Malik (Pakistan).

Since then ICC has claimed on multiple occasions that match fixing in cricket has been brought down to a reducible minimum through tougher laws and vigilance.

But if one believes in the claims made by Mazhar Majeed in the NOTW video then both match fixing and spot fixing are still rampant. The ACSU has only played the role of a scare crow during the last 11 years and have done nothing else. They covered up their embarrassment after the NOTW sting operation by stating that Mazhar Majeed, and a few Pakistani players were under investigations, but nobody asked them why they couldn’t apprehend the culprits earlier? It clearly shows how incompetent the people at ACSU are? If the NOTW sting operation had not been carried out they would still be watching these corrupt activities happening right under their nose.

From investigation point of view the match fixing scandal of 1999 was a huge success. A single recorded telephone call between Hansie Cronje and an Indian bookie by Delhi Police uncovered the biggest match fixing scandal which exposed players from almost every test playing nation and resulted in life bans for three test captains. Cronje would have never confessed if the Delhi police had not done their job professionally and had not gone after the bookmakers.

Players from all countries have been involved in match fixing in one way or the other in the past and ACSU should have no reason to believe that the problem is currently only prevalent in Pakistan team and Mazhar Majeed was the only bookmaker left in the world. Australian, English and SriLankan players in past escaped major punishments because their respective boards protected them and swept everything under the carpet.

It is strangely coincidental that in every incident which involved players from Australia or England the allegations were either flatly rubbished after an in-house inquiry by their respective boards or they were turned into a crime of no material significance like selling the pitch report or team combination etc. The testimonials of the players were accepted as it is and were not challenged or investigated.

The Pakistani spot fixing trio should get a very harsh punishment but the whole exercise is futile if no action is going to be taken against the match fixing Mafia.

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