Mark Taylor confirms CA's knowledge about the players in corruption gate

Former Australian skipper and a member of the Cricket Australia (CA), Mark Taylor, has confirmed that the board is aware of the names of players who alleged fixed matches last season. Recently, a documentary was released by Al Jazeera that suggested the match-fixing activities of an India-based bookie. The documentary also suggested that the syndicate used different tactics to fix matches.

A big revelation was made that claimed that two Australian cricketers received huge sums of money to fix phases of the Ranchi Test match against India last year. Mark Taylor, as per the quotes in MSN, confirmed that CA is already probing the two cricketers in frame. He did not reveal the identities of the players. However, he added that there is no credibility of the reports. The reports suggested that the players were supposed to play very slowly for a brief while in the game.

“It talks about two runs off an over. It talks about a series of six overs where there wasn’t a lot of runs scored, that happens in India all the time,” Mark Taylor quoted.

T20 paving the way for bookies

Adding further on the same note, Mark Taylor was very vocal in putting the blame on the T20 leagues for such reports. He remarked that the various T20 leagues serve as a gateway for the bookies to come in contact with the players. With the T20 leagues being on the rise, the cases of corruption are also going to increase with time.

“The more of these games (we have) it’s going to allow more and more opportunity for the match fixers and the people that want to do wrong by the game. There’s no doubt match-fixing is a major issue for cricket and will be for quite a number of years,” Taylor remarked.

ICC’s take

Meanwhile, the ICC also gave their stance on the same. The ICC Chief admitted that the T20 leagues do pave the way for the bookies to infiltrate in to the game. However, he believes that this can be countered with proper planning and cooperation of the boards of the member nations.

“I think those leagues do provide an additional opportunity for the people that want to get involved and try and fix. So what we need to make sure is that anyone staging a T20 domestic tournament, especially televised, that they have in place minimum standards for dealing with the problem. To make sure they have an anti-corruption code in place that is applicable to the tournament, that all the players are educated, and that we are monitoring the franchise owners, the people involved in the tournament, doing due diligence,” ICC chief executive David Richardson said.

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