Читать книгу Caught Out - Shocking Revelations of Corruption in International Cricket - Brian Radford - Страница 7

Lord Condon’s highly expensive Anti-corruption and Security Unit was set up in a plush office in south-west London in September 2001, funded by the International Cricket Council (ICC) to a reported £2 million. Condon, a former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had been appointed three months earlier as Director of the Unit with a remit to recruit the best team of available investigators to mastermind and launch a worldwide search for the cheats and crooks who were corrupting international cricket matches, and had being doing so systematically for at least 20 years.

A former chief superintendent from New Scotland Yard was appointed senior investigator, and two other former high-ranking detectives were added to the team, along with a security adviser, a systems manager to establish an intelligence database, and a full-time secretary, who acted as office manager.

Condon was directly accountable to Malcolm Gray, President of the ICC, and he began his mammoth task by stressing that confidence in world cricket would be restored only if there was open and frank analysis of past problems, and a resolve to confront the challenges which continued to threaten the integrity and reputation of the game.

No punches were pulled as Condon lashed out at corrupt practices and deliberate under-performing by players that had permeated cricket at all levels across the world, additionally emphasising that a full-blown resurgence was a real and probable threat.

Silence, apathy, ignorance and absolute fear greeted Condon’s clean-up squad as they quickly realised that allegations in the public domain were merely the tip of a titanic iceberg, and that a vast number of people had not reported attempts to corrupt them, or come forward about other people they believed were corrupt.

A diabolically frustrating conspiracy of silence was soon evident among players not wanting to be seen as informants and risk being ostracised by colleagues, while other players and officials justifiably feared that whistle-blowers would be penalised rather than supported.

Condon had to concede that players were afraid of having their international careers brought to a swift end should they dare express anxieties about corruption. And in this he was spot on, as it sadly turned out when Pakistan’s prolific opening batsman Qasim Omar – the only player ever brave enough to provide Condon personally with specific evidence of corruption – exposed the frightening scale of it, and candidly named names, no matter how big they were in world cricket and idolised by millions.

Omar was subsequently ‘rewarded’ for his courageous whistle-blowing assistance with an outrageous seven-year ban by the disgraceful Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) that totally destroyed his international career and alienated him from players of all cricket nations.

I accompanied Omar to the office of the Anti-corruption and Security Unit (usually known just as the Anti-corruption Unit, or ACU, in matters relating to cricket corruption) on two separate occasions and took copious notes while he sat directly opposite Condon and a couple of senior investigators, who struggled with their own note-taking to keep up with an avalanche of explosive revelations, though they knew that everything that he disclosed was being tape-recorded to ensure that not a word was lost in transcript. Later on I shall recall precisely what Omar told Condon and his startled squad behind closed doors on those private visits.

Players, former players, umpires and others have been understandably shocked, angered and embarrassed to discover that they have taken part in matches that were scandalously rigged. Murder, kidnapping, and alarming physical threats to individuals and their families were also immediately linked to cricket corruption as Condon’s squad went into action.

Many players and officials were genuinely frightened of the consequences if it ever became known that they had cooperated with the Anti-corruption Unit, and some were too scared to stop for fear of being attacked by ruthless bookmakers and gambling gangs, and had no choice but to continue.

Great concern arose after several insiders alleged that a major criminal had access to a particular national team to such an extent that he could influence who was selected to play and decide how each member of the side would perform – and under-perform.

It was feared that a contract killing in South Africa resulted from a dispute between rival corruptors from other countries. With its easy profit and simple money-laundering, proceeds from cricket corruption have been sufficiently large to attract organised crime.

Investigators soon collected overwhelming evidence that illegal betting could take place on international cricket matches anywhere in the world, and in some areas it was perceived that players under suspicion of corruption had been tolerated by their governing bodies because they were too important to the national team to be exposed and excluded from selection. Condon made it clear that blame for the spread of ugly cricket corruption should not be placed on the Indian subcontinent alone, and he conceded that corrupt practices were so deeply ingrained in cricket culture that major criminals could be involved.

Some terrified informants agreed to be interviewed only after absolute guarantees were given that all such meetings would be held in safe and secret surroundings, but many rejected even these assurances, declining to provide evidence in a formal and public form. One such person was Indian bookmaker Mukesh Gupta, who alleged that he had paid several highly respected players for crucial information – and named them.

Condon’s crime-busters received allegations that corrupt betting was taking place on:

• the outcome of the toss at the start of a match

• the end from which the fielding captain would select to bowl first

• a set number of wides or no-balls occurring in a specified over

• players being placed in unfamiliar fielding positions, like someone who usually stood on the boundary being put in the slips

• top-order batsmen scoring fewer runs than their opponents who had batted first

• batsmen being dismissed at a specific point in their innings

• total runs when a captain would declare

• the timing of a declaration

• total runs scored in a particular innings, and particularly the total in the first innings of a One-day International.

Several umpires had admitted to being approached by shady people who wanted to know at which end they would stand at the start of a match. Groundsmen had also confessed to fixing pitches for bookmakers to ensure that a match ended in a positive result, and tampering with a pitch overnight to change the predicted course of a game.

Another area of immense worry was the consummate ease with which corruptors were gaining access to players, especially through the total absence of accreditation on tours that allowed undesirable people to mix freely with teams, which provided the perfect breeding ground for improper approaches and corruption.

Condon and his investigators were eager to interview Pakistan batsman Qasim Omar who had courageously broken the strict code of silence among players and officials and had become the first – and only – well-informed insider to go public and lift the lid on the phenomenal extent of corruption swilling around in cricket’s international cesspool.

The ebullient and likeable Omar had telephoned me at the London office of The People newspaper where I worked as a sports and news investigator and offered to blow the whistle because he could no longer bear to see his game destroyed, and the general public deceived and derided by a growing band of greedy crooks in a world of corruption.

After much negotiating about dates and times, Condon’s wish was finally granted when Omar and I arrived at the ACSU office, where he and his two senior investigators, Alan Peacock and Martin Hawkins, both former Scotland Yard officers, greeted us warmly.

Omar had played with, and against, the world’s very best cricketers, many of them absolute legends in the game, and Condon and his aides were openly grateful to him for his explosive revelations about players linked to betting, drugs, prostitution and money-laundering. At one point Condon leaned forward and stressed: ‘Qasim Omar’s revelations are a very important part of the jigsaw. My terms of reference are that we support criminal investigations anywhere in the world. A huge amount of work is under way. There are not enough hours in the day to cope with it.’

That first riveting meeting between Omar and the ACSU was still very much the appetiser, and it was only when Omar returned to their London offices that the main meal was put on a plate for the investigators in a dramatic ten-hour session.

Again I went along with him and again I listened and scribbled as he disclosed, almost without taking a breath, stark details of players who were making a fortune from cheating – and he named them all, clearly and confidently.

Omar, who wanted the investigators to know that he was a devout Muslim, began by recounting a recent visit to Pakistan to talk to cricketers about the value of religion. He recalled arriving at the Gadaffi Stadium in Lahore and meeting three of the country’s best players: bowlers Abdul Qadir and Wasim Akram, and batsman Saeed Anwar.

Becoming noticeably emotional, Omar said: ‘When I was talking to them, people in the Executive Room were wondering who I was, and Rameez Raja [Pakistan’s brilliant opening batsman, and now a popular television commentator] recognised me, and told them that it was Qasim.’

General Tauqir Zia, then President of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), was with them and he told Rameez that Omar should go up and speak to him. Omar was with a former Olympic hockey player, and they both went up to the Executive Room.

‘On my way up, I kept thinking that as General Zia had lots of bodyguards, and was very powerful, he might tick me off [for going public about cricketers and corruption],’ said Omar, ‘but he got up from his chair, and said he was pleased to meet me.’

Omar said he told Zia that he was working in religion, and Zia said: ‘You are in the news again.’ Omar replied: ‘Yes, and I am speaking the truth,’ to which the General responded that if he was now in religion, he should stay away from controversial issues.

‘I told him that if the Pakistan Cricket Board had listened to me many years ago, it would not have got caught up in drug scandals and match-fixing,’ said Omar. ‘But people took no notice of what I was saying.’ Then General Zia had said: ‘When there was a gambling inquiry, why didn’t you come?’

Omar had replied: ‘First of all, you people dragged it on for years and years, but not a single player was mentioned. If you had invited me over [from England, where he lived with his family in Durham], I would have come.’ Omar told Zia that he was going back to the ICC’s Anti-corruption Unit and would tell them what he had seen other players doing, and they should not expect him to keep quiet.

‘I asked him if he was saying that no one knew about these people, when I knew,’ Omar told the ACU, ‘and I asked him: “What about my problem when you banned me? Don’t expect me to stay quiet. If I see anything, I’m going to speak out.” I admitted to him that I’d been involved [in cricket corruption], and that I’d apologised for that, and that I was young and naïve when it happened.’

Zia had asked Omar how they could eliminate things like match-fixing and players under-performing and taking money from bookies. Omar said he was amazed that Zia didn’t know what match-forecasting meant, and had to explain it to him.

‘I told him that players, and captains in particular, took money from bookmakers for letting them know whether they would bat if they won the toss, and what the batting order would be, and who was in the team. And if the captain decided to field, he would tell the bookmaker which player would open the bowling and which end of the ground he would bowl from. This was all new to him. I was shocked that he could be so badly out of touch.

‘I told him that if any money was on offer, certain cricketers would grab it, as lots of them have a short career and didn’t earn a great deal, so they would take risks to earn a bit extra.’

(Condon was due to meet Zia sometime shortly after his chat with Omar, so Omar’s advice to the General was perfectly timed – without that information he would have been highly embarrassed and would have looked stupid.)

With the ACU tape-recorder still whirring, Omar then named a prominent Pakistan player who had said privately that Pakistan matches in New Zealand had been fixed, and that a Pakistan bookmaker, who ran a catering business in Karachi, had assured him that a leading Pakistan batsman had pocketed the equivalent of £100,000 from fixing matches in New Zealand. Omar named this dodgy player, and said that he also knew the bookmaker extremely well, and that he had stayed with him at his home near Karachi airport.

Names of alleged crooked cricketers cascaded from Omar’s relentless tongue as the ACU interview gained momentum, and the next player to be identified was yet another hugely successful Pakistan batsman who, according to Omar, had regularly called at the home of a leading bookmaker in a village near Peshawar, and that the player and bookmaker had gone to tournaments together where matches were fixed.

Omar then switched his fusillade of disclosures to Australia, where he claimed that 23 ‘stunning’ girls had worked as high-class hookers for a bookmaker to provide additional perks for players who fixed matches. Apart from one Pakistani model and a Chinese doctor, the girls were all attractive Australians, and Omar named them all, and even provided their telephone numbers and addresses.

He said the network had been set up in the mid-Eighties and stretched right across Australia, from Brisbane to Perth. Over the years the hookers had included a nurse, a schoolteacher, a travel agent and a glamorous television presenter. Two madams ran the sleazy operation from their homes in Sydney. Omar named them both. He also assured Condon and his team that an identical ‘girls-as-perks’ scandal was being run by a bookmaker in New Zealand, and he named him.

Omar listed some of cricket’s biggest Test stars as having had sex with the go-anywhere hookers, in addition to pocketing large sums of money from bookmakers, both in Australia and New Zealand. Most of the deals were struck secretly in team hotels, with the Sheraton in Sydney a popular rendezvous, plus a restaurant in Sydney’s seedy red light district and a McDonald’s in Melbourne.

One leading Asian bowler was named as having deliberately under-performed in several matches because he desperately needed money for a house he was building. Another bowler was alleged to have faked injury straight after Test matches in order to be paid big money by a bookmaker for not playing in friendly four-day games. This information enabled the bookmaker to land large bets on forecasting who would not be in the Pakistan team.

Omar also revealed that players were pocketing big money for deliberately dropping catches – information that would have infuriated spectators if the truth had ever got out. Omar told Condon and his investigators that the New Zealand hookers usually went to a player’s hotel room for sex, and that one grateful bookmaker also provided porn movies as an additional perk. Specific incidents in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch – the country’s three main cricket centres – were graphically recalled.

At the time Condon was receiving this astonishing information, ICC President Malcolm Gray was warning that the match-fixing scandal could get seriously worse. Alarmingly, he stated: ‘I can assure you that it has been a lot deeper and broader than anyone realised or expected, and I suspect we might get hit with more bad news.’

His disturbing prediction was spot on, which Omar soon confirmed, pointing out that teams from England, the West Indies, Pakistan and India were all in Australia when the sex perk was at its peak.

Yet another shock hit the ACU’s investigators when Omar revealed that an apparently squeaky-clean director of a large company with its headquarters in Western Australia had masterminded the ‘hooker rewards’ operation that was organised with such military precision.

Omar admitted that several of these hookers had been sent to him, but he insisted that he always rejected their sexual favours, though he did enjoy an occasional massage from them and went out for drinks and meals – but that was as far as it went.

Focus was placed on the elusive ‘Mr Fixit’, who was described by Omar as the ‘smooth wealthy director’ whom he named, and he provided business and home addresses. Omar described the director as ‘tall and smart’ and said that he always called him ‘son’. ‘He would say “Hello, son!” or “Thank you, son!” and “Well done, son!” He never called me Qasim, or Omar. He would come to see me before the start of a match, and sometimes during the lunch or tea breaks.

‘We got to know each other well after I scored 48 in the first innings of the First Test against Australia in Perth when I was caught by Graham Yallop off bowler Carl Rackerman. That innings impressed a lot of good cricket judges, including the great Richie Benaud, the Australian bowling legend who was commentating on the match for a TV channel. These people, like Benaud, could not believe that a young newcomer could play such fast bowling with so much courage.

‘When I returned to the team’s hotel, I found that a T-shirt and a nice pen, with the name of a company stamped on it, had been left at reception for me, and later in the evening a man rang my room and praised my innings. He invited me to dinner and, after saying who he was, he handed me an expensive Rado wristwatch, which I later sold in Karachi because I found it too heavy to wear.’

Omar recalled that the mystery man introduced himself as a director of a large company, which he named, and said that he could use money from the company to bet on cricket. He also mentioned the name of a leading Pakistan bookmaker, and said that he knew him well.

Omar was shocked that the director knew this bookmaker, and he recalled: ‘He then said that a number of leading Pakistani batsmen had taken money from him for throwing their wickets away, and that he would “look after me” if I threw my wicket away in the second innings, preferably without scoring a run.

‘I told him that I couldn’t do it, but I promised to do something for him in a three-day match in Sydney, and later on in Brisbane.’

In the second innings of that Test match, wicketkeeper Rodney Marsh caught Omar when he was on 65, and Rackerman was again the bowler.

Proud of his performance, Omar said: ‘People in the media rated my innings the best seen in Australia for many years, as I was so young and had no experience of facing such fast bowlers on such a fast wicket. My innings was played over and over again on television.’

Omar recalled that the Pakistan team travelled straight to Sydney after that Test match, and that a woman called Wendy was waiting for him in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel when the team arrived. She handed him an envelope containing a letter and A$500.

Omar told the investigators: ‘The letter said that a woman called Wendy would “look after me” and I knew exactly what that meant. Wendy told me that the company director had asked her to hand it to me, and she invited me to dinner at a different hotel, where she said that I had to score less than 50 in my first innings. She also predicted that Pakistan would be dismissed for a low score, and she was right. Greg Matthews took lots of wickets and bowled me for 25.

‘Wendy rang my room again in the evening and we went to a restaurant in Sydney’s famous red light district, where we both dined on kebabs.’

Wendy joked with Omar that he should not eat too many kebabs, and claimed that she had been smart and slim before she put on lots of weight from eating this type of food.

According to Omar it was all very relaxed, and he and Wendy got on really well. She knew a lot about cricket, and she surprised him when she named a leading Australian batsman who had worked as a match-fixer for the company director, who had paid him big money for letting him know the team, which bowler would open the attack, and from which end of the ground.

She also named two other Australian players who had ‘taken lots of money from the director to throw their wickets away’.

One of Pakistan’s biggest bookmakers, who travelled all over the world to Test matches, had told Omar that one of these two Australian players had been offered as much as 25,000 dollars to lose his wicket deliberately. Omar told the investigators that this disappointed him a lot because this very popular player had been his hero.

Wendy also told him that a lot of money was being bet on a certain Australian player ending up in an unusual fielding position for him in a Test match during the series.

Holding nothing back, Omar admitted: ‘I was offered 1,000 dollars if I scored less than 25 in the first innings of the Test match in Brisbane, and 2,000 dollars if I did exactly the same in the second innings. Kim Hughes caught me off Geoff Lawson’s bowling in the first innings when I was on 17, and I was on 11 in the second innings when it rained heavily and the match was drawn.’

Next day a number of local newspapers published a quirky picture of Omar standing on the outfield in wellies, and holding a brolly over his head.

He then recalled that one Pakistan bowler was paid by a bookmaker not to play in a number of domestic games, so he faked injuries after Test matches, took big money for doing it, was able to stay out late at discos and casinos, and ended up with a girl who got pregnant.

Adelaide was the team’s next stop and Omar was surprised to find several girls lining up to see him when the team coach arrived at the hotel. He recalled: ‘My director friend had sent them. Wendy was not there this time; a girl called Jill Gabriel had taken over. Just like Wendy had done before, she took me out for a meal in the evening and offered me cash to throw my wicket away. I refused and told her to explain to the director that my place in the team was not guaranteed yet.’

Omar, however, did promise her that he would let them know where certain Pakistan players would appear in the batting order, and who would bowl and from which end. It turned out to be a terrific Test match for Omar, who hit a brilliant 113 in the first innings before he was caught.

Omar told the investigators that when Wendy returned to the cricket circuit she introduced him to a Chinese girl called Kit Wong who controlled betting outlets for Chinese bookmakers and gamblers, and that they discussed plans for him to throw his wicket away, and that she offered him 800 US dollars to do it.

Wendy tried hard to persuade Omar to introduce her to his famous captain, Imran Khan, a legend in world cricket, but he refused, insisting that he never introduced girls to players or dealt in drugs.

He said: ‘Wendy even sent an attractive escort called Tara to Imran, but a security guard spotted her in the corridor just as she was about to knock on his door, and she was marched out of the hotel because she looked too young to be visiting him.

‘When we reached Tasmania, yet another girl, this time called Janet, had left a message for me. I met her at a bar close to the hotel, and I agreed to score fewer than 50 in both innings. She said that big bets had been placed on me to hammer the Tasmanian bowlers. Money and gifts poured in throughout the rest of that Australian tour and I earned around 8,000 US dollars in total for doing what I was asked.’

It was close to 3pm in Condon’s office when Omar suddenly broke off from his conveyor belt of startling revelations and asked, with some urgency, for a mat. Peacock, Hawkins and I were bamboozled. Condon was not present when this commotion was taking place.

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ I asked Omar. ‘What’s your problem?’ He didn’t say a word, didn’t even look across at me but raised his voice, threatening to walk out and never come back unless someone found him a mat.

With time running out, Omar explained that as a devout Muslim he prayed up to five times a day, and as he was now too far from the nearest mosque, he had to have a mat to kneel on for prayers at three o’clock. Desperate not to lose him, Peacock and Hawkins darted from room to room in search of a mat, but could find nothing suitable – until Peacock came up with an idea. ‘What about a newspaper?’ Peacock asked, gingerly. ‘Will that do? Can you manage with that?’

‘Yes,’ Omar replied. ‘Where is it?’

Trouble was, there was no newspaper to be found in the office, so one of the investigators rushed into the street and returned with a pristine copy of the London Evening Standard, which Omar folded neatly, placed on the floor in front of him, and knelt on for 15 minutes, saying his prayers while the rest of us waited silently in an adjoining room until he had finished.

With his prayers happily out of the way, Omar returned to plying the investigators with yet more information, vividly recalling an evening in Wellington when two young prostitutes went to the hotel where the Pakistan team was staying and offered Omar ‘a massage that he would never forget!’

Suddenly chuckling, as the memorable occasion crossed his mind, Omar said: ‘I told them “No thanks, please go away,” but I was told later that the hotel was swarming with high-class hookers who had been sent along by a bookie in return for our team batting and bowling badly. Lots of players might have under-performed on the field, but I’m pretty sure they did their best when the girls arrived! They were terrific!’

Omar admitted to the investigators that he threw his wicket away in the first innings of a three-day friendly match in Christchurch, but scored a century in the second innings to secure his place in the Pakistan team for the First Test in Wellington. He recalled that soon after Pakistan arrived in New Zealand, two of his team-mates introduced him to a hotel owner who also operated as a bookmaker and provided hookers and cash in return for ‘inside’ information.

‘This man offered me 1,000 US dollars to score fewer than 50 in my first innings in the Test in Auckland,’ Omar said. ‘It was very tempting and I said yes, though on this occasion I had no intention of doing it. I took a chance and accepted the money and, as it turned out, I was caught for 33. It was a genuine bat-pad catch, though it seemed to the bookie that I did it deliberately, just as he had asked me to.’

Omar remembered vividly that his paymaster was ecstatic about what he had apparently done, and in the evening he took a ‘gorgeous’ girl round to his hotel and asked Omar if he would like to invite her to his room, and was stunned when Omar turned him down with a polite ‘No, thank you…’

Before the start of the final Test match, Omar said that he arranged with this bookmaker that if he managed to build a big score in the first innings, he would consider deliberately losing his wicket for very few runs in the second innings. He promptly hammered an impressive 96 in the first innings, and had scored 75 in the second innings when ‘someone’ in the team told him that a lot of money had been bet that he would not reach a hundred.

Omar was caught out on 89, and he was deeply disappointed as he desperately wanted to score a century against New Zealand. Again, the bookmaker thought that he had deliberately given his wicket away, and paid him 1,000 US dollars.

He had also played in two One-day matches before that Test – the first in Hamilton, where he chased a wide ball and was caught for two; and the other in Christchurch, where he carelessly ran himself out for nought. Both times he was paid 1,000 US dollars.

Omar also named a prominent England bowler who accepted 1,000 US dollars from an illegal bookmaker to send down a full-length ball that was wide of the leg stump in his first over so that the Pakistan batsman could hit it to the boundary for four, which he did.

Continuing to bare his soul, Omar told the investigators that he personally acted as the bookmaker’s agent in this deal, that he handed the money to the bowler in an envelope at the Continental Hotel in Lahore, and that they later became good friends.

While disclosing the vast scale of international cricket corruption, Omar claimed that some captains were pocketing up to £1,000 simply for telling a bookmaker in advance whether they would bat or bowl should they win the toss. And that captains were earning even more for telling bookmakers who in their team would open the bowling, and from which end of the ground.

Some of the best-known stars were reportedly raking in at least £5,000 a match. The biggest fees were being paid to players who deliberately got themselves out for nought, and to those who let themselves be clean bowled or run out, especially in the first over.

Distance was no problem to many Asian bookmakers, and Pakistan players were personally contacted while on tour in England, Australia, New Zealand and the West Indies. Omar named a leading Pakistan batsman who suffered a string of low scores on a dreadful tour of England when the fans and media were convinced that he was suffering a bad run of form.

Omar, who played alongside him and socialised with him, knew the truth. He clearly recalled: ‘He was not off form at all; that was rubbish. He was working with the bookies and he made big money from them. He also threw his wicket away in a Test match in Australia for a huge fee. I was there when he did the deal and I heard him accept the bribe.’

A spokesman for Condon’s investigating team later confirmed to me that they had traced and spoken to the elusive ‘Wendy’ in Australia, and that she had admitted to them that she was a regular spectator at the Sydney Cricket Ground and that she knew Omar, but categorically denied that she ran hookers for a bookmaker or had paid cricketers to cheat.

Plainly not put off by this predictable reaction, the spokesman added: ‘Our purpose will now be to find her friends. We are going to try to locate as many of the girls as we can.’

When told several weeks later that Wendy had denied that she had organised the hookers for players and paid players to cheat, a tetchy Omar replied: ‘What did they expect? She paid players, and she found girls for players. That’s the way it was. That’s the truth. I’ve met these girls, and I’ve already given their names to the investigators. It was a very big gambling operation.

‘If necessary I will go to Australia and meet her face to face. Players from every cricket country were involved. She paid me for throwing my wicket away. She offered girls to me. They were beautiful girls. I never got involved, but I did have a massage once or twice. So how can she say it never happened? It did happen! Sexual favours were being provided to players for fixing matches and giving information, and it came on top of cash payments.’

A grateful Condon said: ‘Qasim Omar’s revelations are a very important part of the jigsaw. We are strenuously pursuing his allegations. We are very grateful for the information we have received.’

Condon and his sleaze-busters made several trips to India, where they met the Minister of Sport, the Law Minister, officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Delhi police, the country’s Board of Control for Cricket, and special investigator M Mahaven.

What never became clear was whether Condon’s investigators ever interviewed Uttam Chand, who had admitted using codes when making telephone calls to players, and that bets had been placed on what a particular player would score in a certain innings and on what the team would score. A strong rumour went around dressing rooms that the highly confidential code had been cracked and that a large number of star players were shaking in their boots, waiting for a knock on the door.

There was also no hint, let alone confirmation, that Condon’s investigators had interviewed Sanjiv Kholi, a well-known ferocious gambler who ran a chain of smart restaurants and boasted about being close to Indian bowler Manjor Prabakhar, and who had admitted that he had asked him for information during England’s 1993 tour of India. There was even further doubt about whether the ACU had spoken to Piloo Reporter, the Test umpire whom leading Indian bookmaker Mukesh Gupta had claimed was paid for information during England’s same tour of India.

There was no apparent record, either, of an interview with Daleep Seth, who ran the exclusive telephone exchange with 120 private lines for a gang of illegal bookmakers, gamblers and players, or with Rajesh Kalra, who had told the CBI that Prabakhar had placed bets through him.

It was beyond doubt, however, that Mukesh Gupta had twice met investigators from the ACU and had repeated to them what he had told the CBI inquiry – that he had paid England batsman/wicketkeeper Alec Stewart £5,000 for weather, wicket and England’s team composition during the 1993 tour. Stewart was subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing whatsoever by the ECB’s Disciplinary Standing Committee.

Mark Harrison, the ICC Communications Manager, issued a statement on behalf of the ACU in which he said: ‘Mukesh Gupta has been seen twice in India by the Anti-corruption Unit and he verbally confirmed his allegations to investigators from the Unit.’ The Indian authorities also stated that they totally believed what Gupta had told them.

Condon confirmed that he had interviewed Prabakhar, whom Gupta said he had paid to be introduced to Stewart, but ‘was not at liberty to say at this stage what his position is’. What was particularly intriguing was Condon’s adamant comment that ‘for anyone to say, or give the impression, that Alec Stewart would be cleared should Gupta not provide legally binding evidence is quite wrong’.

He went on: ‘It would not mean that the inquiry is at an end. Gupta’s evidence is not the only evidence we have gathered. It does not all depend on Gupta. Those who might think so are ignoring the fact that the inquiry team has interviewed certain players, and members of our team will form a judgement about what the players have said to them.

‘I am not in a position to name those players. Everything has been done on a strictly confidential basis. But let us not get carried away with thinking that this inquiry collapses if Gupta does not go on record legally.

‘The position with Gupta is fairly straightforward. My team has seen him twice. The latest occasion was in March when he verbally confirmed to two investigators all that he had said in the CBI report. It was then important to build on that, and to see whether he would repeat his words in disciplinary or criminal proceedings. He is extremely difficult to pin down, and we are the only people who have seen him, apart from the CBI.

‘I have two investigators in India at the moment doing a number of important things. Part of their role will be to remind Mr Gupta that we are looking to him to fulfil his responsibility. I have invited him to make up his mind by 1 July. If he does not respond by that date, then we must assume that he won’t be doing so. But that would not mean it’s the end of the inquiry because there are many things going on.’

Condon expressed serious concern about the possibility of extreme violence and even murder having been part of the squalid match-fixing world, and said: ‘A number of people have referred to murder. They have reported the fear that some people have been involved. We have no doubt that certain individuals have received personal life threats.’

He was aware of Mukesh Gupta’s statement to the CBI that the Pakistan team had been close to a bookmaker called Hanif Cadbury who was killed in South Africa. Gupta had said that they were most probably ‘doing’ matches for him. Boldly sticking his neck out, Condon predicted: ‘If players are found guilty I am confident that all these countries will apply the appropriate penalty. No one involved in this inquiry is going to let the guilty go free, no matter how good a player he might be.’

Sadly this was totally contradicted by an ICC spokesman, who said: ‘Our brief is not to catch players but to stop the culture of corruption. As soon as our inquiries become criminal we will do our best to get the relevant police to take it on.’

The ICC has no powers of arrest, so everything is very much in the hands of the players and their cricket boards to decide what action is taken, which is why it is so easy for the guilty to have a good laugh and walk away scot-free.

Indeed, Prabhakar told me from Delhi: ‘We’ve been punished over here, so why are players not being punished by the cricket boards in other countries? Why are they being treated with kid gloves?’

Condon’s comments were so strange at times that I wondered whether he was the right man to be heading such a vast inquiry into a sport with which he had so little empathy or knowledge, and his qualification for the job as a former Metropolitan Police superintendent seemed seriously insufficient for the task in front him.

I imagine that the statement he made in May 2001 kept flashing back as the number of cricket corruption inquiries and allegations grew to a crisis level, and that Pakistan’s despicable match-fixing tour of England in summer 2010 caused him untold nightmares and embarrassment. Should anyone have forgotten, Condon’s fateful words were: ‘My ambition is to make it so tough for the few bad guys still left that the risks are not worth it.’

Players too terrified to bowl a deliberate no-ball, drop catches, give their wickets away in return for fat brown envelopes? Hardly! The truth is that cricket’s legion of crooks know too well that the ICC and the toothless independent cricket boards have as much bite as a mouse with dentures. Absolutely nothing will improve until cricket’s leaders forget about trying to preserve the ‘we are absolutely clean’ image and burn the brooms that brush the dirt under their carpets.

Silence is golden, as the old saying goes. Never could those words have been more joyfully said than in world cricket, in all languages from Bombay to Brisbane, Lahore to Lord’s, and Colombo to Cape Town. Test cricketers across the world have united in a conspiracy of silence, and key informants have refused to speak to the ICC investigators.

Condon encountered the frustration first-hand when he and a senior investigator flew half way round the world to Sri Lanka to interview two former Test heroes who had been named in the CBI report as players who had accepted money from an Indian bookmaker, but they declined to answer the questions he put to them.

Undaunted by their silence, Condon and his investigators battled on with little success, and he despairingly disclosed that only two countries had responded ‘satisfactorily’ to an ICC request for confidential knowledge and details of involvement in corrupt practices.

The trouble was that the proverbial wall of silence did not end with tongue-tied players, officials, managers and administrators. Not a single new name was mentioned in Condon’s 77-page tome. He referred only to those exposed in the CBI report, the King Commission in South Africa, and the Pakistan Cricket Board inquiry.

To be fair to Condon, he accepted that he faced a gigantic problem in getting people to speak to him and his team. He made the point that ‘although the Anti-corruption Unit has a vital role to play, its members do not have the powers given to judicial inquiries and police forces’.

India’s cricket leaders were fully satisfied that bookmaker Muktesh Gupta had told the truth. Indeed, they named, warned and banned players on the strength of his evidence. An official statement confirmed: ‘The CBI felt that their principal witness, M K Gupta, a bookmaker, had not been disproved in respect of any allegations that he had made, and they did not think he was lying.’

Corrupt cricketers, illegal bookmakers and crooked gamblers are a curse to the game at every level, and it is critical that the ICC does not help them tarnish the sport even more by staying mute when drastic action is needed.

It is imperative that the ICC tears off its gag and names and shames the guilty individuals, and it is just as important that every individual governing body provides maximum support to rid the sport of the insidious silence that is threatening to undermine all those genuine efforts that are being made to clean up the sport.