The Indian Premier League (IPL) has attracted adverse remarks in a report submitted to executive board of the International Cricket Council (ICC) on Wednesday.
The report, which is in fact an independent review of the ICC’s anti-corruption arrangements, says the IPL has the potential to increase the risk of match-fixing and spot-fixing. The review was done by Bertrand de Speville, a former solicitor general of Hong Kong.
Speville specifically mentions IPL while making a generalised observation on the risk of match-fixing due to the advent of Twenty20 cricket.
“The view of those consulted is that the arrival of international T20 cricket and the Indian Premier League has considerably increased the risk of match-fixing and spot-fixing,” the commissioner of the Independent Commission Against Corruption in Hong Kong states in his 33-page review.
The review was commissioned by the ICC in the aftermath of the ‘spot-fixing’ scandal involving Salman Butt, Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif.
It’s significant that Speville has cited the Indian tournament in his voluminous report even though Twenty20 is played worldwide, virtually in every cricket-playing nation. He, however, hasn’t forgotten to mention that the ICC’s Anti-Corruption Security Unit (ACSU) oversees the Twenty20 extravaganza. “By contractual arrangement, the ICC provides services to the IPL. There is no reason to suppose that the risk of corruption unconnected with betting will have diminished,” the report states.
The report starts saying the corruption in cricket has not gone away, despite the efforts of ICC and ACSU. “The utopian outcome was never to be expected,” he states citing the example of the spot-fixing scandal involving Pakistan players. “Regrettably there is no reason to believe that the risk is any less today than it was in 2001.”
It is not the first time that the league has evoked doubts at the global level. Paul Condon, former ACSU chief, raised apprehensions over the IPL in 2008, saying it could be the biggest threat to international cricket since the days of Sharjah.
“The IPL brings with it the biggest threat in terms of corruption in the game since the days of cricket in Sharjah,” Condon had told an ICC meeting then.
Speville recommends that five more Regional Security Managers (RSMs) should be engaged on part-time basis in view of the fact that their workload has grown substantially by the ICC’s extension of service to the non-ICC tournaments like IPL. There are five RSMs in the ACSU.
With the IPL set to unveil its auction in two days, the report could come as a major embarrassment for the league’s managers. The BCCI officials were not immediately available for comment, while IPL COO Sundar Raman said he had not seen the report.
“I’m busy with the auction. It will be difficult for me to comment as I’ve not seen this report,” Raman said. The general perception in the BCCI, however, is that the ACSU authorities have given a clean chit to the tournament.
Speville compiled the report after consulting many top ICC and ACSU officials. He even spoke or corresponded with the chief executives of the national boards. In this context, is believed to have interacted with N Srinivasan, the current president of the BCCI.
“The report contains a total of 27 recommendations. In receiving the recommendations, the board concurred with the preliminary views of Sir Ronnie Flanagan that seven of the recommendations were either unworkable or unsuitable for cricket.
“Of the remaining 20, 13 recommendations have been accepted, while seven are consistent with current ACSU policy or practice,” the ICC said in a release. When contacted, an ICC spokesman said, “The board will consider the report in further detail in due course.”
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