Pawar dismisses Kambli's match-fixing claims

LUCKNOW : Dismissing former cricketer Vinod Kambli's claim on match-fixing, chief Sharad Pawar on Saturday said, "I would have taken the claims seriously, if the same had come from players like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly or for that matter former team manager and coachAjit Wadekar."

Pawar, who was in Lucknow to attend Nationalist Congress Party's meet, said, had Kambli focussed only on cricket than other things, he would have been standing in league of great players like Sachin Tendulkar. As a player, Kambli had everything which could have made him as great a player as Sachin is today.

A couple of days back, Kambli had raised suspicion on the 1996 World Cup semi-final between India and Sri Lanka and had said he found "something amiss" in the game which effectively brought an end to his international career.

The left-handed batsman, who scored 1,084 runs in 17 Tests and 2,477 runs in 104 ODIs for India, said he was suspicious of then captain Mohammed Azharuddin's decision to field first in the semi-final which was eventually awarded to Sri Lanka because of crowd problem.

Kambli also claimed that his suspicion arose due to Azharuddin's decision to field first even though it was unanimously decided that the team would bat after winning the toss. "I will never forget the 1996 match because my career ended after this and I was dropped from the team. I was stunned by India's decision to field first," Kambli had said.

When asked to comment on the issue, Pawar first tried to downplay it saying, "It is a 15-year-old matter." However, after a few pauses he couldn't stop himself from saying, "No wonder Kambli was a great batsman; his claims are nothing but irresponsible and unwarranted."

On former chief of cricket's anti-corruption wing Paul Condon's claims of match-fixing, Pawar said, he(Condon) was talking of matches, which were played in 80s and till 1990.

Condon, the founding chief of International Cricket Council's anti-corruption unit, had told aLondon newspaper, "Every international team, at some stage, had someone doing some funny stuff. In the late 1990s, Test and World Cup matches were being routinely fixed. There were a number of teams involved in fixing, certainly more than Indian subcontinent teams were involved."

Condon, however, asserted that the genesis of match-fixing lay not in the subcontinent, but in English county cricket, where favours were traded between teams across the 40-over Sunday League and first-class championship .

The ICC's former anti-corruption chief also did not rule out fixing in present day matches including the IPL. Pawar said, "I had a meeting with Condon, where he did talk about match-fixing and was quite general on his claim about all the nations."

Condon had also said that excess of Twenty20 cricket has resulted in re-emergence of corruption in cricket. Condon had reportedly said, "Probably, the greatest trigger point was the explosion of T20. The 'anything goes party' atmosphere allowed some really bad people back into the game. Some of the notorious fixers from early years started to re-emerge on the circuit in India, Pakistan, South Africa, Australia and the UK."

"Condon during the meeting never took name of India at any point of discussion with me. However, he did name two cricket playing nations gravely involved in match-fixing," Pawar further said, and refused to name the two countries, which were questioned by Condon during a meeting with him.