Every cricketing nation fixed matches, not just Pakistan, says former ICC anti-corruption chief Paul Condon
Every cricketing nation fixed matches, not just Pakistan, says former ICC anti-corruption chief Paul CondonAll of cricket's leading countries were involved in the fixing of major matches, not just Pakistan, the sport's former chief anti-corruption investigator, said Tuesday. "In the late 1990s, Test and World Cup matches were being routinely fixed," Paul Condon, the founding head of the International Cricket Council's anti-corruption unit, said in an interview with London Evening Standard.
Paul Condon"There were a number of teams involved in fixing, and certainly more than the Indian sub-continent teams were involved. "Every international team, at some stage, had someone doing some funny stuff. This month, a British court jailed three Pakistan cricketers for deliberately bowling no-balls in a Test against England at Lord's last year in order to effect an illegal betting coup.
Former Pakistan captain Salman Butt was sentenced to 30 months in prison while bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer were jailed for a year and six months respectively. But Condon, a former head of London's Metropolitan Police Force who helped set up the ICC's anti-corruption and security unit (ACSU) in 2000 and chaired it for a decade, said: "A whole generation of cricketers playing in the late 1990s must have known what was going on and did nothing."
And Condon added the root of the problem lay not in Asia but in English county cricket, where favours were traded between teams across the domestic 40-over Sunday league and first-class Championship competitions.
