BCCI treasurer Anirudh Chaudhry has pulled up former Pakistan skipper Shahid Afridi for not reporting the 2010 spot-fixing matter to ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit despite getting a sniff of the trouble that was brewing in the team as some players were getting close to then player agent Mazhar Majeed.
Taking to Twitter, the treasurer wrote: “Actually, once he became aware, he ought to have immediately reported it to the Anti Corruption Unit of the @ICC . How the ACU dealt with the information of him not having reported this would be interesting because it was a failure of his obligation Inder the code.”
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The ICC rule, as accessed by IANS, says: “Participants must report all approaches, or information regarding corrupt conduct, or invitation to engage in corrupt conduct, to the appropriate ACU, without unnecessary delay.”
Afridi has revealed in his autobiography ‘Game Changer’ that he was aware of the malpractices by teammates Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif before the 2010 spot-fixing scandal broke out.
He revealed that when he raised it with the team management, the inaction caused him frustration leading to his stepping down from the Test captaincy and eventually retiring from the longest format of the game. “Yes. For the record, I gave up. I quit.”
Afridi said he become aware of suspicious conversations between then player agent Majeed, who was at the centre of the scandal, and players who were eventually accused during the 2010 Asia Cup in Sri Lanka.
“I got hold of the original evidence in the racket — phone messages that would eventually come into play against players involved in the spot-fixing controversy,” he said. “When I took that evidence to the team management, what happened next didn’t inspire much confidence in those tasked with managing and running the affairs of Pakistan’s national cricket team.”
“Before the Sri Lanka tour, Majeed and his family had joined the team during the championship. At one of the Sri Lankan beaches, Majeed’s young son dropped his father’s mobile phone in the water and it stopped working.
“Majeed gave the phone for repair to a shop whose owner was a ‘friend of a friend’. While fixing the phone, the shop owner, when asked to retrieve the messages came across Majeed’s messages to players of the Pakistan team. Though he shouldn’t have seen what he did, it was that leak from him to my friend and a few others (whom I won’t name) that looped me in on the scam.”
Afridi elaborated how he tried to alert the Pakistan team officials about conversations, but no action was taken.
“When I received those messages back in Sri Lanka, I showed them to Waqar Younis, then coach of the team. Unfortunately, he didn’t escalate the matter. Both Waqar and I thought it was something that would go away, something that wasn’t as bad as it looked, just a dodgy conversation between players and Majeed, at worst. But the messages weren’t harmless banter — they were part of something larger, which the world would soon discover,” the former Pakistan captain revealed.
