COLOMBO, Sept 27: The anti-corruption unit of International Cricket Council would study video material of 10-run defeat South Africa suffered at the hands of India in semifinal of ICC Champions Trophy Wednesday as standard practice.
Mark Harrison, ICC media manager, said it was standard practice to make video material of all matches available to anti-corruption unit and that they would analyse any event they regarded as unusual.
In Sri Lanka many local fans openly raised their eyebrows about the way the South African innings collapsed to turn an easy win into defeat.
Some even said that the anti-corruption unit would be able to make some interesting findings if it was to analyse the match to the finest detail.
After 37 overs South Africa stood at 192/1 on their way to the winning target of 262. In 13 overs they thus had to score only 72 runs at 5.7 runs per over and with nine wickets in hand. This, however, proved a bridge too far for them.
Indian cricket journalists present said anyone placing a bet on a 10-run Indian victory at that stage would probably have had odds offered at 1000-1 and could have made huge amounts of money.
The view from India was also that the manner in which the South African innings collapsed was strange. The unfortunate reality around the scandal about match-fixing is that cricketing public has become cynical about any result that was even just a little surprising.
A spokesperson for ICC said it would have been very stupid to try and cook result with five members of anti-corruption unit present at the match.
Eric Simons, South African coach, said he was not even going to comment on such an absurd possibility.—PPI































