ICC (International Cricket Council) chief executive David Richardson has a fear over the new domestic T20 Leagues as he believes that these tournaments have the greatest risk of corruption.
The recent Al Jazeera sting operation on match-fixing has shaken the cricket world once again while ICC has not been taking lightly those allegations.
During a special event on the mark of exactly one year to go to the beginning of 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup, David Richardson pointed out the big problems over the new domestic T20 Leagues.
He said on that, “I think those leagues do provide an additional opportunity for the people that want to get involved and try and fix. So what we need to make sure is that anyone staging a T20 domestic tournament, especially televised, that they have in place minimum standards for dealing with the problem.
“To make sure they have an anti-corruption code in place that is applicable to the tournament, that all the players are educated, and that we are monitoring the franchise owners, the people involved in the tournament, doing due diligence.”
The ICC Chief has also assured that they will take some strict action to prevent the match-fixing.
He said on that, “So it’s going to be a case in the future that before any approval is given for these types of tournaments that happen outside the full members, they’ve got to show that they’ve either got the ICC involved in setting up an anti-corruption unit, or the tournament doesn’t take place. We’ve got to take much sterner action in the future.”
While there are allegations on some England and Australian cricketers to getting involved in the match-fixing, present England and Australian captains have denied those claims.
However, Richardson has promised that ICC will go through on those allegations fully and will investigate accordingly.
The 58-year-old former South African cricketer said on that, “I’m always concerned if people are talking about fixing in cricket. Simply it just means we have got to do some work investigating what has come out of it, and we will, and I’m a little perturbed by any accusation that we would attempt to sweep it under the carpet or pretend that nothing has happened.
“We are meeting with them (Al Jazeera) in the next couple of days, so there’s no reason to think we’re not going to be allowed to investigate fully.”
Richardson also pointed out the importance of the cricketers to stop the corruption.
He has spoken on that, “I’ve always thought it was really up to the players. Without the players helping, it’s not as if we’ve got a police force of thousands operating around the world. But the good thing is they’re pretty determined to root it out and make sure we keep the game clean as far as possible.”
