© Cricket Australia
Corruption remains a challenge in Indian cricket, and to counter this the BCCI will beef up its anti-corruption unit (ACU), the CoA chief Vinod Rai has said. A new possible avenue of corruption is the introduction of new states to first-class cricket. Many of these states don’t have a settled feeder system, and there are fears that fringe players from outside these states could use unfair means to play for them.
Rai said it was important that the ACU be reinforced to tackle any such issues. “We don’t want to single out any state or a group of states,” Rai said. “As far as the BCCI is concerned, we have an ACU, which we are now beefing up. That is one of the very important mandates which has been given to us.
“It used to be only one plus two persons, but now we are ensuring they will have presence in every zone. That presence will be of people who would have worked in that zone, have some idea about that zone, so that they can interact. The idea is to not set up an entire police force on its own but have people who can monitor and provide an intelligence network through which this kind of activities can be looked into, can be addressed, and preventive action can be taken.”
The ACU has had its hands full of late. BB Misra, the Supreme Court-mandated lead investigator into the IPL corruption case, has recently red-flagged the player-agent nexus and also brought to light a World Cup-winning player’s phone calls with a bookie in the lead-up to international matches. In an interview with the Indian Express, Misra said he didn’t get enough time to probe that particular case. This was followed by Justice Lodha’s comments that a probe be re-opened.
Rai said a probe has been commissioned, but he also said the BCCI was not aware of any such incident. “We saw the report [in the newspaper],” Rai said. “We looked into it. We entrusted the chief of the ACU in the BCCI to look into it. We found that in the BCCI we have no records at all about any of these issues. Maybe there are some records which are available to him but we are not aware of that. Anyway, the chief of the ACU has been entrusted to make an enquiry into it. He will take the steps, he is best qualified to try and enquire into it.”
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo