CA seeks probe details on Australia-Pakistan series

Published>Sat, May 22 10 08:37 PM

Melbourne, May 22 (IANS) Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive James Sutherland has asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) for details of its investigation into Pakistan's disastrous tour of Australia that has come under a cloud for match-fixing.

Outgoing ICC anti-corruption chief Paul Condon's strong suspicions that Pakistani players deliberately underperformed has taken CA by surprise and undermined its ongoing insistence that the Sydney Test win is because of home side's heroics, The Age reported Saturday.

'It is a series that worried us. We spent a lot of time talking to the players and the PCB but part of the challenge is to find where the solid fact is, because what you've got there is a lot of internecine strife within the team and within Pakistan politics, with rival camps making allegations,' Condon said.

Condon said at Lord's that while the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit had not unearthed proof of match-fixing, the inquiry was ongoing.

CA promised to cooperate with any inquiry, if necessary making players available to give evidence about their experiences in the match, but Sutherland wrote to the ICC for more information.

'We have no knowledge of any concerns and we'd have expected to have some knowledge if there were any,' a CA spokesman said. 'If the ICC had any concerns we would absolutely provide them with whatever support they needed. At this stage we believe we won that game on the merits of our performance.'

Pakistan had taken a first-innings lead of 204 in the Sydney Test. Pakistan wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal dropped match-winner Michael Hussey three times and his failure to remove the bails in an attempted run-out of Shane Watson alarmed then assistant coach Aaqib Javed.

The PCB punished seven players for indiscipline and in-fighting during the winless tour. Captain Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan were banned indefinitely, Shoaib Malik and Naved-ul-Hasan were suspended for a year while Shahid Afridi, Akmal and his brother Umar received six months' probation.

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