Press Trust of India
Mumbai, March 6: The ICC has put in place checks and balances to eliminate corruption during the upcoming World T20 Championship starting in two days’ time, said the world governing body’s anti-corruption unit’s (ICCACU) chairman, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, here Sunday.
He informed that like in the past major ICC events, a 24-hour tournament-specific hotline has been set up to report on ‘corrupt approaches’ by the players and others. He however, cautioned that due to human nature it may not be entirely possible to root out the fixing menace.
“There are 58 games, for men and women in the World T20 Championships which, we hope, will be an unforgettable experience. My priority is that at the end of the tournament we will be talking about cricket and not, I hope, about corruption,” said the ICCACU official at a media conference here.
“Our activity is designed to prevent corruption, to disrupt activities of those who try to corrupt the game. We engage in education programme for players, support staff, match officials (etcetera) and tell them they must report any suspicious approach made to them. We give them a little booklet to fit into their wallet which also has hotline numbers to contact us at any time.
“We have a tournament-specific 24-hour hotline and another hotline to our office in Dubai. Last year there were 450 reports and we took them all seriously. Human nature is such that it may not be possible to totally eliminate these corrupters. What we seek to do is to make cricket a very difficult environment to corrupt,” added Sir Flanagan.
He also revealed that the anti-corruption unit has recently come across an instance where an unnamed team’s players were intending to indulge in corrupt practices but they were aborted by the ICC’s intervention. “The matter is still under investigation… so I won’t name the team or the players. But they have been forced to abort their attempts,” the ICCACU chief informed.
