The media Al Jazeera has some serious allegations on the International Cricket Council (ICC) and some national boards for being bias towards the players of “Anglo-Saxon” countries while giving them clean chits in fixing scandals. They also accused BBC, who didn’t publish the details of an investigation on alleged match-fixer Aneel Munawar by its correspondents of the show Panorama.
Al Jazeera also revealed that apart from having discussions with Interpol, they are looking forward concerned about “ICC’s ability and resolve to police” the game. They have asked two most important questions to the ICC, first of which being that when did the global body came to know about Munawar’s activities and what action was taken? and other the one being that in last five-years how many players have been found guilty of match-fixing or spot-fixing.
The media house recently released a cache of audio recordings where Munawar, who is a member of the crime syndicate D-Company, phones in details of a spot-fix to a bookmaker about matches between 2011 and 2012.
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In the documentary which was released in May, Munawar was seen talking about access to cricketers around the world and revealed that three England players and two Australian players are in complete contact with him. However, in the following documentary which was broadcasted earlier this month, addresses the concerns in some quarters that Munawar might have been idly boasting to Al Jazeera’s investigators.
As soon as the documentary was released, the Australian and English cricket boards dismissed the accusations on their anonymous players and ICC just issued a template statement that they would investigate. Beyond it, the media accuses that the ICC doesn’t address more serious charges raised in the documentary, particularly the implication that it knew of Munawar as early as 2010, but had done nothing about it until now.
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Regarding the same, Al Jazeera’s statement read, “We are particularly struck by what appears to be a refusal in some quarters even to accept the possibility that players from Anglo-Saxon countries could have engaged in the activities exposed in our programmes.”
Even as they question the impassivity showed by various media houses, Al Jazeera targeted the BBC in particular alleging to have scurried a similar investigation on Munawar by its investigative show Panorama.
