Cricket: The ICC needs to ‘get serious’

Former president wants more efforts to curb corruption.

LAHORE:

Former International Cricket Council (ICC) president Ehsan Mani has labelled the governing body ‘far away’ from resolving the corruption related concerns in the game, urging them to ‘get serious’ in resolving the growing issues.

“The ICC might have done a lot in the case but they are still far away from resolving things completely,” Mani told The Express Tribune. “They have a complete unit [the ACSU] to deal with these things but to me it is under-resourced and if their intentions are serious, then they have to increase the budget and more importantly have to enhance the jurisdiction.”

The ICC has been kept rather busy recently with the spot-fixing allegations against the Pakistan trio as well as the allegations levied by former Sri Lanka captain Hashan Tillekaratne.

Meanwhile, Mani welcomed the ICC chief’s comments over legalising betting legal in the subcontinent and insisted that an official license would help in monitoring the bookmakers’ activities.

“India is the main hub of illegal activities which I think is a root cause. In a match involving India, an average bet  is about $3-4m.”

Not a good time to host cricket in Pakistan

According to Mani, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chose an ‘ambitious mode’ in bringing international cricket back to the country when they should have been a little considerate.

“The ground reality is no international team will tour Pakistan as things stand in the country. The PCB should’ve switched to Plan B and arranged a neutral venue.”

“They should come out of the exercise of convincing teams to tour Pakistan for a while because the refusal is a disgrace to the PCB.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 28^th, 2011.