Cricket: Bribery `not only in Pakistan'

THE Pakistan Cricket Board chairman, Khalid Mahmood, fears that betting and bribery in the sport may be widespread.

Mahmood, in New Zealand for the International Cricket Council's executive board meeting, which is grappling with the problem of corruption, hinted that match-fixing may not be confined to Pakistan.

"Match fixing and betting is an issue we are currently investigating and this can be more widespread than perceived to be," he said.

Former Pakistan captains Wasim Akram and Salim Malik, Ejaz Ahmed, Mushtaq Ahmed and Waqar Younis are all under investigation by a judicial commission. The International Cricket Council chairman, Sir Clyde Walcott, said a draft proposal on match-fixing was being prepared.

The ICC has yet to decide how to tackle the match-fixing scandal. Its chief executive, David Richards, said the sport's governing body wanted first to set up an independent inquiry into the allegations.

A spokeswoman for New Zealand Cricket, which is hosting the key meeting in Christchurch, said the matter was discussed at the start of the ICC's two-day executive board meeting but was postponed until today after delegates moved to less complicated issues.

The Australian umpire Darrell Hair was interviewed by the ICC yesterday after Sri Lanka complained about comments he made about the action of spinner Muttiah Muralitharan.

Hair called Muralitharan for throwing seven times during a 1995 Test and later wrote that his action was "diabolical". The Sri Lankans called on the ICC to charge him with bringing the game into disrepute. A decision on Hair is expected today.

The Australian wicketkeeper, Ian Healy, has refused to comment on a suggestion he may have deliberately missed a stumping in a one-wicket loss to Pakistan in 1994. Azmat Saeed, a lawyer representing the former Pakistan captain Salim Malik, put the suggestion to former Test spinner Tim May as the inquiry into match-fixing continued in Melbourne.

Healy allowed four leg byes from the bowling of Shane Warne, giving Pakistan a one-wicket win in the first Test of the 1994 series, which decided the series. Healy said he did not wish to dignify the suggestion by commenting on it.

When Saeed put the matchfixing suggestion to May he replied: "Absolutely not."