Australian all-rounder Glenn Maxwell has said that he is “shocked” and “hurt” by the allegations of spot-fixing that were made in an Al Jazeera documentary about corruption.
Al Jazeera’s documentary, which investigated the Tests between Australia and India in Ranchi (March 2017) and England and India in Chennai (December 2016) shows Indian national Aneel Munawar who is said to work for the crime syndicate D-Company naming two Australian players and three England players who were a part of the fixing. Allegedly, the fixers asked the cricketers to score runs at a run-rate lower than what the illegal betting market was placing bets on during certain periods of the game.
However, Maxwell, who scored his maiden Test hundred in the match in question responded to the accusations in an interview to an Australian radio station SEN, saying he was “devastated.”
Expressing his opinion about the same, Maxwell said, “I was shocked. I was a bit hurt by it as well. To have these allegations about your involvement in a game where you’ve only got happy memories about it, great memories…I still remember the feeling after hugging Steve Smith after getting my maiden Test hundred. To have that tarnished by these allegations was pretty devastating and obviously, there’s absolutely no truth to it whatsoever. It was 100% unfair, to tarnish one of the best moments of my career was pretty brutal.”
ALSO READ: Glenn Maxwell Apologizes To Sarfraz Ahmed
He further added, “The only thing they could have done worse was tarnished that (2015) World Cup win. They’re two of the best moments of my career. To say I’d done anything untoward in that game when I’d just finally got back in the Test side – I’d worked my absolute backside off – to say I’d do anything to ruin that would be absolutely ridiculous.”
Maxxie also revealed that he has not been formally approached by anti-corruption officials from Cricket Australia or the ICC as of now, albeit he was sent the footage from the documentary which was relevant to him.
Talking about the documentary further, Maxwell said, “If (Al Jazeera) mentioned any names, they would be taken down pretty heavily. They didn’t mention any specific names but did basically say the time of the game, which was my involvement. You could see it was the gear that I was using, and there wasn’t anyone else using that gear in that game. That was certainly very hard to take.”
ALSO READ: Al Jazeera postponed ICC meeting and called it ‘premature’
Describing his honesty towards the ACU, Maxwell said, “I’ve been very honest with them (anti-corruption officers) the whole way through with the IPL. If I’ve ever seen anything untoward I always sat down with them, had a long coffee and just talked about everything to make sure nothing ever, ever comes back to me. If there’s anything slightly amiss, I always give them a call and make sure they have every bit of evidence they can possibly have.”
A full investigation by the ICC’s anti-corruption unit, along with the CA, ECB and BCCI is currently underway after the international body and CA requested Al-Jazeera for the un-edited footage of the documentary to make a thorough investigation into the matter.
