July 25, 2008	Friday	Rajab 21, 1429

NEW DELHI, July 24: The International Cricket Council (ICC) has expressed concern over multi-million dollar Indian Premier League (IPL) being susceptible to match-fixing because of twin reasons of excessive cash involved and the over-hype surrounding it.

ICC General Manager (Cricket) Dave Richardson said Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) Chief Sir Paul Condon in a presentation at the annual conference in Dubai, has warned that “IPL brings with it the biggest threat to the game in terms of corruption since the days of cricket in Sharjah”.

“We are concerned. Let’s face it, the IPL is the first domestic competition which has attracted such huge interest and when it does it’s going to inevitably going to attract the interest of match-fixers and people like that,” Richardson said.

“And because of the interest created, there is no doubt that we would be concerned if the BCCI neglected that part of the game and didn’t make sure that they had very strict measures in place to ensure doesn’t take a foothold in the IPL or any other domestic competition for that matter,” he was quoted as saying by a cricket website on Thursday.

Richardson said Condon’s presentation was an attempt to inform the member boards on what is the current situation of corruption in the game. “The purpose of the meeting and having the briefing from Lord Condon is to keep the members informed and so the message was clearly accepted by the BCCI.

“There is certainly no criticism intended on IPL or the BCCI. It’s just a fact of life that there is a lot of betting going on in cricket. And that because there’s so much money passing hands, inevitably the temptations are going to be there to try and get the players involved”.

Richardson said the IPL had many cricketers who would not have undergone ICC’s anti-corruption education process and could fall to softer approach by bookies. “...you’ve got players who don’t necessarily go through the ICC education process... so it’s very important for the BCCI to make sure that those players who wouldn’t know what exactly going on because you know it’s normally a softer approach... How about a nice leather jacket or something... and then they get you like that. So as long as the players are aware of the dangers we should be able to keep it under control.”

On an IPL window in the Future Tours Programme (FTP), Richardson said it was difficult to say anything at this stage. “Well ideally if you could create a window (for IPL) without jeopardising all other international tours obviously that would be an ideal situation. But the fact is apart from India and perhaps England all the other countries rely very heavily on their international tours or their bilateral tours.”

“They don’t make money from their domestic competitions. so obviously we have to be very careful that we don’t create a out practically we would go for it. But to say that we’d definitely create a window it’s impossible to say at this stage,” said Richardson.—Agencies