Mumbai, India (BBN)-In the backdrop of the growing threat of corruption in cricket, the anti-corruption watchdogs have mostly come across as toothless bodies.
Or so it has begun to appear. Until now, not a single issue related to fixing or betting in cricket has come to light because of the efforts of the International Cricket Council’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU), reports The Times of India.
Instead, it has either been because of the efforts of the media or local police (Delhi and Mumbai crime branch for instance), or the various courts independently monitoring corruption in cricket.
The letter from Lalit Modi to the ICC chief executive that surfaced on Twitter last week was written in June 2013. Two years have passed and one doesn’t known if the matter was probed or not. And if probed, then what was the conclusion.
While ICC is not transparent at all on the issue of investigating corruption, BCCI’s anti corruption unit never bothered investigating the matter simply because the matter wasn’t under its jurisdiction.
The ICC – cricket’s global governing body – hires the ACSU while all member boards of the ICC appoint their own respective security units to look into various domestic circuits in their countries. Modi’s letter cited three international cricketers and therefore, the BCCI’s anti-corruption unit said it wasn’t for the Indian cricket board to investigate.
“Since the cricketers mentioned are international players, it is the ICC that would have to investigate it,” former BCCI anti-corruption chief Ravi Sawani said.
The Indian Premier League happens to be BCCI’s domestic tournament and the BCCI ACSU could’ve investigated the contents of the letter on those grounds. However, Sawani said that Modi’s letter “did not mention IPL and therefore we couldn’t have done anything.”
The ICC hasn’t revealed yet if its own ant corruption unit investigated the matter at a after receiving the complaint. No word from the ICC had come out yet but on Monday , BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur gave a clean chit to the cricketers mentioned in Modi’s letter.
Whether it be the Hansie Cronje episode (where the deceased cricketer himself confessed), the Salman Butt & Mohd Aamir fixing scandal (where the media exposed the betting ring), or the recent IPL mess (in which the Delhi and Mumbai crime branch did the investigation), none of the cases have been unearthed by the ACSU.
BBN/SK/AD
