Dave Richardson, the CEO of International Cricket Council (ICC), is confident to successfully keep the upcoming 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup corruption free. He also added that the national governments need to make more efforts to stop the match-fixing.
The 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup is just more than five months away to begin as it will be hosted by England and Wales from 30 May to 14 July 2019. While Richardson will end his journey as the CEO of ICC after the completion of 2019 CWC, he claimed that they are very confident to maintain the upcoming CWC corruption free.
During a promotional event in New Delhi, the 59-year-old told, “Working hand in hand with the law enforcement agencies will help us do that. So (we are) very confident that we will keep the World Cup corruption free.”
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As the T20 leagues have been developed in many top cricketing nations, ICC CEO asks the national governments for the crucial help top eliminate the corruptions from cricket. Richardson added that they are trying to convince the national governments to make the cricket match-fixing as a criminal offence.
The former South African wicketkeeper said, “Most of our efforts now are on disrupting the criminals and this means persuading governments to introduce legislation that can make attempts to fix cricket matches a criminal offence, so that those types of people are put behind bars.”
Richardson further added the present role of Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) as he claimed that the Unit is trying to be more pro-active on these issues.
The ICC CEO said, “The ACU is trying to be much more pro-active. First of all, in disrupting these criminals who are travelling the world trying to corrupt the game.
“We are also getting much better intelligence on who these people are and we have been able to do that only because more players are reporting the approaches to us.”
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Recently, the former Sri Lanka all-rounder Dilhara Lokuhettige has been suspended by ICC after he was charged by match-fixing during the first edition of T10 league in UAE last year. While the second edition of the T10 league just completed, it had the ICC approval after assuring to make it the corruption free tournament.
Richardson added, “Whether it is T10 of any other league, we will have a much more robust system in place before these leagues are approved.”
