Breaking News: Arbib asks for cautious treatment of betting allegations against the Aussies - ICC World Cup 2011
Mark Arbib, the Australian Federal Sports Minister, demands cautious handling of the reports regarding the spot-fixing allegations into the Australian cricket team’s sluggish opening of the World Cup match.
An Indian newspaper had recently reported a betting probe of the Aussies by ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU), after Brad Haddin and Shane Watson played slowly in the first 10 opening overs of the match against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Zimbabwe-c3045. Despite Australia’s
91-run victory in the match, the tardy performance of the first few overs put the Aussie players under the radar. Haddin and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Watson-c96326 scored 28 runs in 11 overs and 53 in 15 overs, but the main focus of the scrutiny lay on the first 2 overs that had only reaped
5 runs.
A few months back Haddin and Watson had reported the news of being approached by a suspected http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746’s Ashes Series in 2009.
Concerning the betting fiasco, Australia coach Tim Nielsen defended his players, claiming that the match was played according to their game plan.
Australian team manager, Steve Bernard criticized the Indian media. He termed the idea, put out by the media as ridiculous and completely misleading, as a score of 5 for 0 in two overs is nothing to be suspicious about.
Considering the proliferation of betting in the past few years, ACSU has become mindful of any unusual scoring trends, keeping a strictly watchful eye for odd patterns.
Former http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Rashid-Latif-c84084, had already declared his fears with respect to World Cup’s layout. He said that the format is bound to draw attention of the bookmakers and elicit corruption due to the predictable nature of the matches between a strong
and weak team.
Knowing about the huge population of bookmakers in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750, ACSU has paid special attention to the World Cup as millions of dollars are held at stake. To deal with the prospects of spot-fixing security agencies were involved; agents were positioned amongst
the spectators and patrol teams were watchful of any suspicious activity in the team hotels.
Arbib said that people should not believe in every news they come across, as information without an authentic source may be entirely misleading. He alerted that the report should be dealt with a great deal of caution as the Australian cricket team has depicted
strong emotions as a consequence.
“I think all of us should be very careful in dealing with the issue, it was an Indian newspaper report, not a report coming from the ICC,’ he said with emphasis.
He was worried about people accepting the news as fact. He went on to say that there needed to be notification from the ICC on the issue before any interpretations could be drawn.
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