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Caught Out
Shocking Revelations of Corruption in International Cricket
By Brian Radford John Blake Publishing Ltd
Copyright © 2012 Brian Radford
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-85782-989-1
CHAPTER 1
PANIC AND PRAYERS AT CONDON'S ANTI-CORRUPTION UNIT OFFICES
Lord Condon's highly expensive Anti-corruption and Security Unit was set up in a plush office in south-west London in September 2001, funded by the International Cricket Council (ICC) to a reported £2 million. Condon, a former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had been appointed three months earlier as Director of the Unit with a remit to recruit the best team of available investigators to mastermind and launch a worldwide search for the cheats and crooks who were corrupting international cricket matches, and had being doing so systematically for at least 20 years.
A former chief superintendent from New Scotland Yard was appointed senior investigator, and two other former high-ranking detectives were added to the team, along with a security adviser, a systems manager to establish an intelligence database, and a full -time secretary, who acted as office manager.
Condon was directly accountable to Malcolm Gray, President of the ICC, and he began his mammoth task by stressing that confidence in world cricket would be restored only if there was open and frank analysis of past problems, and a resolve to confront the challenges which continued to threaten the integrity and reputation of the game.
No punches were pulled as Condon lashed out at corrupt practices and deliberate under-performing by players that had permeated cricket at all levels across the world, additionally emphasising that a full-blown resurgence was a real and probable threat.
Silence, apathy, ignorance and absolute fear greeted Condon's clean-up squad as they quickly realised that allegations in the public domain were merely the tip of a titanic iceberg, and that a vast number of people had not reported attempts to corrupt them, or come forward about other people they believed were corrupt.
A diabolically frustrating conspiracy of silence was soon evident among players not wanting to be seen as informants and risk being ostracised by colleagues, while other players and officials justifiably feared that whistle-blowers would be penalised rather than supported.
Condon had to concede that players were afraid of having their international careers brought to a swift end should they dare express anxieties about corruption. And in this he was spot on, as it sadly turned out when Pakistan's prolific opening batsman Qasim Omar – the only player ever brave enough to provide Condon personally with specific evidence of corruption – exposed the frightening scale of it, and candidly named names, no matter how big they were in world cricket and idolised by millions.
Omar was subsequently 'rewarded' for his courageous whistle-blowing assistance with an outrageous seven-year ban by thedisgraceful Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) that totally destroyed his international career and alienated him from players of all cricket nations.
I accompanied Omar to the office of the Anti-corruption and Security Unit (usually known just as the Anti-corruption Unit, or ACU, in matters relating to cricket corruption) on two separate occasions and took copious notes while he sat directly opposite Condon and a couple of senior investigators, who struggled with their own note-taking to keep up with an avalanche of explosive revelations, though they knew that everything that he disclosed was being tape-recorded to ensure that not a word was lost in transcript. Later on I shall recall precisely what Omar told Condon and his startled squad behind closed doors on those private visits.
Players, former players, umpires and others have been understandably shocked, angered and embarrassed to discover that they have taken part in matches that were scandalously rigged. Murder, kidnapping, and alarming physical threats to individuals and their families were also immediately linked to cricket corruption as Condon's squad went into action.
Many players and officials were genuinely frightened of the consequences if it ever became known that they had cooperated with the Anti-corruption Unit, and some were too scared to stop for fear of being attacked by ruthless bookmakers and gambling gangs, and had no choice but to continue.
Great concern arose after several insiders alleged that a major criminal had access to a particular national team to such an extent that he could influence who was selected to play and decide how each member of the side would perform – and under-perform.
It was feared that a contract killing in South Africa resulted from a dispute between rival corruptors from other countries. With its easy profit and simple money-laundering, proceeds from cricket corruption have been sufficiently large to attract organised crime.
Investigators soon collected overwhelming evidence that illegal betting could take place on international cricket matches anywhere in the world, and in some areas it was perceived that players under suspicion of corruption had been tolerated by their governing bodies because they were too important to the national team to be exposed and excluded from selection. Condon made it clear that blame for the spread of ugly cricket corruption should not be placed on the Indian subcontinent alone, and he conceded that corrupt practices were so deeply ingrained in cricket culture that major criminals could be involved.
Some terrified informants agreed to be interviewed only after absolute guarantees were given that all such meetings would be held in safe and secret surroundings, but many rejected even these assurances, declining to provide evidence in a formal and public form. One such person was Indian bookmaker Mukesh Gupta, who alleged that he had paid several highly respected players for crucial information – and named them.
Condon's crime-busters received allegations that corrupt betting was taking place on:
• the outcome of the toss at the start of a match
• the end from which the fielding captain would select to bowl first
• a set number of wides or no-balls occurring in a specified over
• players being placed in unfamiliar fielding positions, like someone who usually stood on the boundary being put in the slips
• top-order batsmen scoring fewer runs than their opponents who had batted first
• batsmen being dismissed at a specific point in their innings
• total runs when a captain would declare
• the timing of a declaration
• total runs scored in a particular innings, and particularly the total in the first innings of a One-day International.
Several umpires had admitted to being approached by shady people who wanted to know at which end they would stand at the start of a match. Groundsmen had also confessed to fixing pitches for bookmakers to ensure that a match ended in a positive result, and tampering with a pitch overnight to change the predicted course of a game.
Another area of immense worry was the consummate ease with which corruptors were gaining access to players, especially through the total absence of accreditation on tours that allowed undesirable people to mix freely with teams, which provided the perfect breeding ground for improper approaches and corruption.
Condon and his investigators were eager to interview Pakistan batsman Qasim Omar who had courageously broken the strict code of silence among players and officials and had become the first – and only – well-informed insider to go public and lift the lid on the phenomenal extent of corruption swilling around in cricket's international cesspool.
The ebullient and likeable Omar had telephoned me at the London office of The People newspaper where I worked as a sports and news investigator and offered to blow the whistle because he could no longer bear to see his game destroyed, and the general public deceived and derided by a growing band of greedy crooks in a world of corruption.
After much negotiating about dates and times, Condon's wish was finally granted when Omar and I arrived at the ACSU office, where he and his two senior investigators, Alan Peacock and Martin Hawkins, both former Scotland Yard officers, greeted us warmly.
Omar had played with, and against, the world's very best cricketers, many of them absolute legends in the game, and Condon and his aides were openly grateful to him for his explosive revelations about players linked to betting, drugs, prostitution and money-laundering. At one point Condon leaned forward and stressed: 'Qasim Omar's revelations are a very important part of the jigsaw. My terms of reference are that we support criminal investigations anywhere in the world. A huge amount of work is under way. There are not enough hours in the day to cope with it.'
That first riveting meeting between Omar and the ACSU was still very much the appetiser, and it was only when Omar returned to their London offices that the main meal was put on a plate for the investigators in a dramatic ten-hour session.
Again I went along with him and again I listened and scribbled as he disclosed, almost without taking a breath, stark details of players who were making a fortune from cheating – and he named them all, clearly and confidently.
Omar, who wanted the investigators to know that he was a devout Muslim, began by recounting a recent visit to Pakistan to talk to cricketers about the value of religion. He recalled arriving at the Gadaffi Stadium in Lahore and meeting three of the country's best players: bowlers Abdul Qadir and Wasim Akram, and batsman Saeed Anwar.
Becoming noticeably emotional, Omar said: 'When I was talking to them, people in the Executive Room were wondering who I was, and Rameez Raja [Pakistan's brilliant opening batsman, and now a popular television commentator] recognised me, and told them that it was Qasim.'
General Tauqir Zia, then President of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), was with them and he told Rameez that Omar should go up and speak to him. Omar was with a former Olympic hockey player, and they both went up to the Executive Room.
'On my way up, I kept thinking that as General Zia had lots of bodyguards, and was very powerful, he might tick me off [for going public about cricketers and corruption],' said Omar, 'but he got up from his chair, and said he was pleased to meet me.'
Omar said he told Zia that he was working in religion, and Zia said: 'You are in the news again.' Omar replied: 'Yes, and I am speaking the truth,' to which the General responded that if he was now in religion, he should stay away from controversial issues.
'I told him that if the Pakistan Cricket Board had listened to me many years ago, it would not have got caught up in drug scandals and match-fixing,' said Omar. 'But people took no notice of what I was saying.' Then General Zia had said: 'When there was a gambling inquiry, why didn't you come?'
Omar had replied: 'First of all, you people dragged it on for years and years, but not a single player was mentioned. If you had invited me over [from England, where he lived with his family in Durham], I would have come.' Omar told Zia that he was going back to the ICC's Anti-corruption Unit and would tell them what he had seen other players doing, and they should not expect him to keep quiet.
'I asked him if he was saying that no one knew about these people, when I knew,' Omar told the ACU, 'and I asked him: "What about my problem when you banned me? Don't expect me to stay quiet. If I see anything, I'm going to speak out." I admitted to him that I'd been involved [in cricket corruption], and that I'd apologised for that, and that I was young and naïve when it happened.'
Zia had asked Omar how they could eliminate things like match-fixing and players under-performing and taking money from bookies. Omar said he was amazed that Zia didn't know what match-forecasting meant, and had to explain it to him.
'I told him that players, and captains in particular, took money from bookmakers for letting them know whether they would bat if they won the toss, and what the batting order would be, and who was in the team. And if the captain decided to field, he would tell the bookmaker which player would open the bowling and which end of the ground he would bowl from. This was all new to him. I was shocked that he could be so badly out of touch.
'I told him that if any money was on offer, certain cricketers would grab it, as lots of them have a short career and didn't earn a great deal, so they would take risks to earn a bit extra.'
(Condon was due to meet Zia sometime shortly after his chat with Omar, so Omar's advice to the General was perfectly timed – without that information he would have been highly embarrassed and would have looked stupid.)
With the ACU tape-recorder still whirring, Omar then named a prominent Pakistan player who had said privately that Pakistan matches in New Zealand had been fixed, and that a Pakistan bookmaker, who ran a catering business in Karachi, had assured him that a leading Pakistan batsman had pocketed the equivalent of £100,000 from fixing matches in New Zealand. Omar named this dodgy player, and said that he also knew the bookmaker extremely well, and that he had stayed with him at his home near Karachi airport.
Names of alleged crooked cricketers cascaded from Omar's relentless tongue as the ACU interview gained momentum, and the next player to be identified was yet another hugely successful Pakistan batsman who, according to Omar, had regularly called at the home of a leading bookmaker in a village near Peshawar, and that the player and bookmaker had gone to tournaments together where matches were fixed.
Omar then switched his fusillade of disclosures to Australia, where he claimed that 23 'stunning' girls had worked as high-class hookers for a bookmaker to provide additional perks for players who fixed matches. Apart from one Pakistani model and a Chinese doctor, the girls were all attractive Australians, and Omar named them all, and even provided their telephone numbers and addresses.
He said the network had been set up in the mid-Eighties and stretched right across Australia, from Brisbane to Perth. Over the years the hookers had included a nurse, a schoolteacher, a travel agent and a glamorous television presenter. Two madams ran the sleazy operation from their homes in Sydney. Omar named them both. He also assured Condon and his team that an identical 'girls-as-perks' scandal was being run by a bookmaker in New Zealand, and he named him.
Omar listed some of cricket's biggest Test stars as having had sex with the go-anywhere hookers, in addition to pocketing large sums of money from bookmakers, both in Australia and New Zealand. Most of the deals were struck secretly in team hotels, with the Sheraton in Sydney a popular rendezvous, plus a restaurant in Sydney's seedy red light district and a McDonald's in Melbourne.
One leading Asian bowler was named as having deliberately under-performed in several matches because he desperately needed money for a house he was building. Another bowler was alleged to have faked injury straight after Test matches in order to be paid big money by a bookmaker for not playing in friendly four-day games. This information enabled the bookmaker to land large bets on forecasting who would not be in the Pakistan team.
Omar also revealed that players were pocketing big money for deliberately dropping catches – information that would have infuriated spectators if the truth had ever got out. Omar told Condon and his investigators that the New Zealand hookers usually went to a player's hotel room for sex, and that one grateful bookmaker also provided porn movies as an additional perk. Specific incidents in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch – the country's three main cricket centres – were graphically recalled.
At the time Condon was receiving this astonishing information, ICC President Malcolm Gray was warning that the match-fixing scandal could get seriously worse. Alarmingly, he stated: 'I can assure you that it has been a lot deeper and broader than anyone realised or expected, and I suspect we might get hit with more bad news.'
His disturbing prediction was spot on, which Omar soon confirmed, pointing out that teams from England, the West Indies, Pakistan and India were all in Australia when the sex perk was at its peak.
Yet another shock hit the ACU's investigators when Omar revealed that an apparently squeaky-clean director of a large company with its headquarters in Western Australia had masterminded the 'hooker rewards' operation that was organised with such military precision.
Omar admitted that several of these hookers had been sent to him, but he insisted that he always rejected their sexual favours, though he did enjoy an occasional massage from them and went out for drinks and meals – but that was as far as it went.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Caught Out by Brian Radford. Copyright © 2012 Brian Radford. Excerpted by permission of John Blake Publishing Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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