Match Fixing News

Steve Waugh among four offered bribes on Pak tour: May

KARACHI: As the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) prepares to begin it's inquiry into match-fixing and betting allegations, Tim May, one of the Australian cricketers allegedly offered bribe by Salim Malik, has offered a startling new insight into the circumstances of the offer, contradicting some parts of other players' stories and naming a fourth Australian player -- Steve Waugh -- as having been in the villain's sights.  According to reports carried in an Australian newspaper, 'The Age", Tim May alleges that Steve Waugh was with himself, Mark Waugh and Warne when a second bribe offer was made at an official function in the latter part of the tour.  May had initially treated the first offer, during the first Test, as a joke. May's version
contradicts the one given by Warne and Mark Waugh in their news conference last week, and in Warne's report to the ACB in February 1995, when they said they had relayed the bribery offer to management immediately. Instead, May said the offer was unintentionally spoken about by Mark Waugh some weeks after the initial approach after a one-day game that Australia lost. This one-day game was the occasion when tour manager Col Egar and coach Bob Simpson became aware of the offers.
May condemns the ACB for leaving himself, Mark Waugh and Warne exposed to defend their position. He alleges the ACB took a forceful role in covering up the bribe offers and didn't allow them to say anything further on the issue. Significantly, May's account differs in crucial areas to that of the stories given by Warne and Mark Waugh. Yet May, as a former player, cannot be compelled to give evidence to the Australian inquiry. He is on leave in the United States.  What is clear from May's account is that firstly the first bribe offer was made to him and Warne in Karachi on the night before the last day of the first Test and Mark Waugh was never involved in that incident.
According to May, they didn't say anything more about the first offer until they were at an official function in Islamabad when the second bribe offer was made. "We were sounded out from a certain Pakistani player saying "$US50,000 each." "There were four blokes: the Waugh twins, Warne and Myself." According to May, the Pakistani player said "$50,000 each if you put in a stinker ... very important we win this game.'' May says the offer was rejected outright. According to May, Australia lost the said match even after scoring about 270 and he recalls: "And I think Mark Waugh walked in the room ... we hadn't told anybody about these bribes and that sort of stuff, we thought it was just ... hush. ``Christ, did this really happen?'' and Mark Waugh said (jokingly): ``Ah, would've been better off taking the bribes, guys.''Another report in the 'The Age' says that a report by the manager of the Australian team on the 1994 tour is likely to figure prominently in the board's investigations.  It is understood, the report by Colin Egar, or relevant sections of it, was never made available to any inquiry. It is believed that Egar has never provided evidence to any of the three inquiries held in Pakistan, nor produced a report or a sworn statutory declaration as Warne, Mark Waugh and Tim May did in Antigua in April
1995. 'The Age' reports quote sources close to the ACB as saying that they have never seen Egar's report. Other sources say other important documents are not stored in their expected places in board archives and they suspect that some important documents may even be missing. Shane Warne has given evidence several times that the morning after Malik's first bribe attempt, he told captain Mark Taylor and coach Bob Simpson of the approach. This would have been on October 2, 1994. Yet May in his interview contradicts this and throughout this affair and in the report of the first inquiry held by former judge Fakhruddin Ebrahim, it is said that Egar was not told of the bribe attempt until the third Test which ran from November 1-5.
In his report, Ebrahim wrote: ``In my view, these documents (those provided by the ACB) do not contain the most important document which is the customary manager's report of the tour submitted to ACB or the response by the manager in writing, when allegations became public in February 1995 through (the) Australian press. There is also no statement or report by ICC referee Mr John Reid submitted to ICC.''  One more puzzling inconsistency likely to be put forward to the inquiry is that in his original unsworn statement Warne says that on both occasions, when Malik is alleged to have offered him a bribe, he told Taylor and Simpson. In his sworn statement, there is no mention of him telling anyone.
 
 

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