The Thin White Line: The Inside Story of Cricket's Greatest Fixing Scandal by Nick Greenslade

Author:Nick Greenslade [Greenslade, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports & Recreation, Cricket
ISBN: 9781785317330
Google: yHumzQEACAAJ
Publisher: Pitch Publishing (Brighton) Limited
Published: 2020-08-15T05:00:00+00:00

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Suspending the country as a whole, as Speed had suggested, was never seriously considered, but it was clear that the only way to defuse the situation was to suspend the three players as soon as possible. To do that the ACSU officers had to ratify that there was a prima facie case for them to answer and that meant going to the News of the World.

On Tuesday, an ICC delegation, led by Lorgat and including Sawani, headed to Wapping. Colin Gibson, with his Fleet Street connections, acted as the convenor and the exchange he had brokered was simple: the paper would co-operate with the organisation’s inquiry, but Lorgat would have to give an exclusive interview in return.

At Wapping, Sawani was introduced to house lawyer Tom Crone. He asked if he could see all relevant tapes and transcripts. Crone told him that he could look at everything that had been presented to Cressida Dick and her team. What’s more, he could even take them away with him, as the police had done. To Sawani, the lawyer’s co-operation was a thing to behold. He and his officers were not used to media organisations, or indeed anyone caught in their web, being so accommodating. He got out of Wapping before anyone at the Screws could change their mind.

At the same time, Lorgat was briefing Paul McCarthy and Sam Peters for an article that would appear in the paper five days later. At one point, Lorgat surprised the pair by turning the interview process around and asking them, ‘Do you think cricket is corrupt?’ Neither gave an answer, which indicated that they considered the Lord’s Test a one-off.

Lorgat’s interview was intended to put a lid on the story, but it wasn’t going to appear in print for several days and in that time a feeding frenzy developed. In Pakistan, actress Veena Malik, whom Mohammad Asif had been seeing until an acrimonious split earlier in the year, gave a television interview in which she talked about his links to an Indian bookmaker called Dikshit: ‘Asif used to call up [him] and other bookies as well on the phone of his servant. I have evidence of the messages he exchanged with the bookies.’ She maintained that he had told her that there was good money to be earned from spot-fixing.

Hasan Raza, an ACSU representative in South Asia, subsequently met with Malik who said on 2 September that she had ‘handed over Asif’s voice recordings with the bookie and some other related information to the ICC official. From head to toe, Pakistani players and officials are involved in match-fixing. I had gone with Asif to Bangkok before Pakistan’s tour of Australia. Asif told me he was offered $40,000 by an Indian bookie to underperform in Australia but he demanded $200,000. The Pakistan Cricket Board had evidence of this but no action was taken against him.’

Further details were leaking out about Majeed, who had been arrested along with his wife and a man believed to be his brother by customs officials investigating not just the scandal but also money laundering.

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