FICA rejects Condon's fixing claims

The Federation of International Cricketers' Associations has strongly rejected comments by cricket's former anti-corruption chief Lord Paul Condon that match-fixing was rife in the 1980s and 1990s. In a newspaper interview earlier this week, Condon had also said that "every international team, at some stage, had someone doing funny stuff".

Tim May, FICA's chief executive, took exception to the blanket indictment of players. "Player Associations are getting sick and tired of people coming out making these general accusations, the effect of which casts doubts over the entire player base," he said. "If people are going to make these types of accusations, make sure that they are specific and make sure that you have the proof to back up such claims."

May also rubbished Condon's other claim, that "a whole generation of cricketers playing in the late 1990s must have known what was going on and did nothing." "To suggest that a whole generation of cricketers knew what was going on is clearly without any foundation - to further claim that they should be feeling shamed by not doing anything about it is an excessive observation."

May also asked why more wasn't done to punish guilty players if Condon, the ICC's first head of the ACSU, had been aware of large-scale fixing. "You have to ask the question, If the ICC knew such facts and had such information, why was there no retrospective action taken by the ICC or the individual Boards."

One aspect of Condon's remarks that May agreed with was the need for more player participation in eradicating corruption in cricket. "Players should be more closely involved by the ICC in the search for solutions," May said. "FICA and its member associations have for a long time being pushing for greater involvement with anti-corruption education and input into general anti-corruption issues."

Spot-fixing has been in the news of late with three Pakistan cricketers - Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir - jailed for their parts in deliberately bowling no-balls against England, at Lord's, in 2010. Butt was sentenced to two-and-a-half years, Asif was handed a year and Amir got six months.

On Thursday, Vinod Kambli, the former India batsman, told news channel Star News that he had "doubts" about the 1996 World Cup semi-final between India and Sri Lanka in Kolkata. Kambli said that the Indian team had agreed on batting first in case of winning the toss, but had fielded instead. Kambli's accusations have been denied by the then Indian cricket manager Ajit Wadekar and his team-mates in that game, including captain Mohammad Azharuddin, Sanjay Manjrekar and Venkatapathy Raju.