Sunday, April 01, 2007

If it has seemed over the past few days that cricket and illegal betting are
incurably connected, an alternative view comes from - of all places -
Karachi, where the head of the city's AntiCorruption Establishment declares
that three years ago he came within sight of stamping out underground
gambling houses completely. Karachi is split into 19 "towns", the equivalent
of boroughs, and Inspector General Asad Ashia Malik assigned a force of 190
officers, ten to go undercover in each of them. Between 2002 and 2004, they
conducted 38 raids and made 1,032 arrests. "I almost wiped the evil out
altogether," Malik said yesterday. "I think I accounted for 80 per cent of
it. All the big strong groups I smashed. The other 20 per cent were those
without a permanent base. They mainly moved in cars, often to the beaches,
packing up and moving on fast. "I played first-class cricket myself from
1979 to 1990 [he bowled off spin and once took the wicket of Rashid Latif,
the former Pakistan wicketkeeper], but the problems started when big money
came into cricket. The arrival of the mobile phone made it even worse."
In 2004, Malik was promoted from chief of police to the head of the
anticorruption unit. For the record, he is not impressed with the police
work being carried out in Jamaica in the wake of Bob Woolmer's murder, but
at home he says that while illegal gambling is a huge industry, it is not
one that is uncontrollable. "I'd say there are now about 50 illegal gambling
houses operating at any single time," he said. "They are an underworld
mafia, often dealing in narcotics and gambling side by side. The police keep
raiding them and making arrests, but they surface elsewhere and we start
again." The bad news for cricket, though, is that while Malik believes he
can make inroads in his own city, he is just skimming the surface of
cricket's
problem. In Karachi, they may gamble on cricket, but the industry is
controlled from Dubai and Bombay. However, he said, cricket could do an
infinitely better job of policing itself. The ICC's own anticorruption unit
would be served better, Malik believes, if there was better policing of
tours, where bookmakers can masquerade as fans and come into contact with
players. "Senior police officers should be attached in the specific role of
an anticorruption watchdog," he said. He also advocates an internal
financial checking system whereby the assets of players should be declared
annually to their own cricket boards. Ironically, this recommendation formed
part of the report put to the Pakistan Cricket Board seven years ago, which
appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

The report was the result of an 18-month investigation by the High Court
judge, Justice Malik Mohammad Qayyum, into match-fixing involving the
Pakistan cricket team and led to Salim Malik, a former Pakistan captain,
being banned. Other players were also reprimanded, notably Inzamam-ul-Haq
(fined) and Mushtaq Ahmed, the present assistant coach, whom Qayyum
recommended should never again be allowed a position of responsibility in
the national side.

Qayyum said yesterday that he feared Woolmer's death could have been avoided
had his report not been "swept like dust under the carpet". Sarfraz Nawaz,
the former Test player who has made a number of unsubstantiated claims about
corruption in the game, also repeated allegations on national television
that he had proof that the Pakistan team had been gambling.

"My recommendations were implemented to an extent," Qayyum said, "but now it
seems they are being ignored. It just seems I was wasting my own time. In
this country, we feel that cricket is really a part of us. Now we feel
betrayed."

Inspector General Malik also said he feared that the gambling industry was
behind Woolmer's murder. "I believe it was due to the affairs of betting,"
he said. "The amount of money involved is millions and the people involved
are very ruthless people. Maybe Woolmer was approached and just didn't
succumb to the pressure."

He is unimpressed by both the security arrangements at the World Cup and the
standard of the investigation into Woolmer's death. "So far they haven't
contacted us to ask about betting patterns or anything and that is
surprising," he said. "To my assessment, the investigation is not very
sharp. How many days was it before they were looking at the CCTV footage?
Almost a week. I don't know why. I am astonished that they do not know yet
who visited every room.