Retired Justice Malik Qayyum demanded the government to send its own inquiry team to the West Indies to probe into the death of Bob Woolmer.
KARACHI: Retired Justice Malik Qayyum, who carried out judicial inquiry into match-fixing in Pakistan cricket, on Thursday demanded the government to send its own inquiry team to the West Indies to probe into the death of coach Bob Woolmer and the team's shocking loss to Ireland.
"As far as Woolmer's death is concerned it is a sad thing and I am griefed by it. But at the same time we need to look into the allegations of him being murdered due to involvement of the betting mafia. It is a serious issue and must be treated as seriously by our government and Board," he said.
Qayyum said he was surprised that despite his recommendation that leg-spinner Mushtaq Ahmed must not be given any position of responsibility in future, he was made assistant coach and sent to the World Cup.
"The assistant coach position is a strong one and clearly the Board ignored my recommendation. At times, I feel all my hard work has gone down the drain."
He said no one could have imagined that Pakistan would lose to Ireland even on a bad day and condemned Pakistan Cricket Board for ignoring his recommendation.
"The Board didn't implement many of my recommendations. I feel that perhaps the International Cricket Council also didn't pursue the issue of match-fixing as seriously as it should have done."
"It set up an anti-corruption squad but it was not enough. I feel if the ICC and its member countries had done more perhaps we would not be faced with the sad death of Woolmer," Qayyum said.
The retired Judge had no doubt that match fixing still remained a problem in cricket and needed to be tackled more efficiently and seriously.
"It is a bane of our times and more needs to be done to root out corruption in cricket and prosecute guilty people," he added.
He also said the allegations of match-fixing being a cause of Woolmer's death might not be true but they showed that the menace still lingered on in the game.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's federal minister for sports, Shamim Haider was left red faced at the conference when responding to reporters he said he also backed Qayyum's demands but later it was revealed that he was not authorised to interfere in matters related to cricket and hockey.
While cricket is handled by the President's secretariat with Pervez Musharraf being the chief patron of the PCB, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz appoints the head of the Pakistan Hockey Federation.
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