India is the epicentre of betting, Mani says

Sharjah: Ehsan Mani, the former International Cricket Council (ICC) president, wants a "robust education programme" for the players to keep them from indulging in corrupt practices in the future.

Speaking to Gulf News from London, Mani said: "These incidents can be avoided by the cricket boards having a robust education programme for the players; appointing mentors from within the team to help and guide new players; having an anti-corruption unit to monitor domestic and international cricket.

"Most of the boards already do this, unfortunately Pakistan Cricket Board's (PCB) anti-corruption programme was not effective. The education programme for the players should start when they first start playing domestic first class cricket."

Mani believes that India is the epicentre of cricket betting though.

"The epicentre of cricket betting is India; hundreds of millions of dollars are bet on each match, particularly when India is playing; the ICC Anti-corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) is not able to access the betting odds being offered or monitor suspicious bets being placed.

Audit urged

"The ICC must engage with the governments of countries such as India and Pakistan where a very large unregulated betting industry exists. Unless betting is regulated in these countries, it will remain very difficult to stop players from being approached."

According to Mani, the ACSU must be allowed to conduct an audit on the anti-corruption process of every Test-playing nation.

"I believe the ICC ACSU does a very good job within the constraints of its legal and jurisdictional authority. I would, however, like to see the ACSU have the powers to carry out an annual audit of the anti-corruption processes of every Test playing member country, testing the players and relevant officials through annual online questionnaires to assess how well they understand the ICC Code of Conduct on corruption," he said.

Mani even suggested suspending teams that did not pass the annual audit. "Where players get low scores, the ACSU should have the authority to require the player's board to take remedial action and re-training of the board's officials in charge of educating the players," he said.

Suspension

"In case of extreme failure on part of a board to ensure that its players really understand what is required, the country should be suspended from international cricket until the ICC Board is satisfied that the particular country has a robust anti-corruption regime," he said.

When asked where Pakistan had gone wrong in this incident, Mani said: "The primary responsibility was that of the PCB to ensure that the players properly understand how they could be corrupted; what to look out for; what to do if they were approached with a proposition which required them to do something on the field of play; have the confidence in the team management to report any approach promptly and understand the consequence of getting involved with corrupters."

"Although the PCB does tell the players about the ICC Code of Conduct on corruption, clearly the message had not got through to the players. This was a major failing of the PCB and PCB should not only accept responsibility for this but undertake to ensure that it does not happen again," he said.