Qayyum confirms his call to ban tourists

By Mihir Bose

THE confusion surrounding the Pakistan cricket match-fixing report has worsened. Justice Malik Mohammed Qayyum, the man whose report the world is eager to see, has contradicted claims by Lieutenant General Tauqir Zia, the head of Pakistan cricket, that no members of the Pakistani team playing in the West Indies will be affected by his report.

On Wednesday, Zia said: "I think that the players who are in the West Indies, will not be affected by the release of Justice Malik Mohammed Qayyum's report."

When I put Zia's comment to Qayyum, he said: "There are members of the current team against whom punishment has been recommended, so when the General says they will not be affected I don't know what he means."

So what exactly does the General mean? The most charitable explanation is that he is quibbling over words. When he said that the entire Pakistani team were not involved in "planned match-fixing" he was leaving open the possibility that individual players may have been. Again when he said that none of the players playing in the West Indies faces a life ban, Qayyum may have recommended punishments short of that. Zia's comments that the report will enhance the prestige of Pakistan are also meant to reflect the tremendous work Qayyum did, interviewing 70 witnesses in the most sustained match-fixing inquiry, rather than seeking to assert that Pakistan cricket is squeaky clean.

But even with such generous spin, the fact remains that in the two weeks since Pakistan promised the International Cricket Council that they would release the report, some very confusing messages have been emerging from the country.

The worst of these was Zia's comment that he has been asked by the Pakistan president, who is also the patron of the cricket board, to seek legal clarification over the report. I understand that this led to a meeting on Tuesday evening when Zia visited Qayyum at his home in Lahore where over tea the legal clarification Zia wanted involved asking how the judge came to be appointed and under what law he had acted.

Qayyum explained that he had acted under the Commission of Inquiry Act 1965. Such questions may seem absurd, but since Qayyum was appointed in September 1998 there have been three changes in the administration of Pakistan cricket and one change of government.

The whole matter is further complicated by the fact that, unlike other cricket boards, the Pakistan board are not autonomous. The president of the country is their patron and Zia, who took over after the military coup, will have to seek directions from the president before the report is released. With politics, the military and cricket so hopelessly mixed, the only wonder is that there is not even more confusion.

Meanwhile in India, Manoj Prabhakar, the former Test cricketer who has made sensational allegations regarding match-fixing, has had an eight-hour interview with the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Indian equivalent of the FBI, who are carrying out an inquiry into match-fixing. I understand that Prabhakar repeated his allegations but could not offer corroborative proof.

The Indian Comptroller and Auditor General is also to examine allegations of scams in telecasts of sports events on Doordarshan, India's state broadcaster, including those contained in a report prepared by a financial consultant, Arun Agarwal.

The controversial report which was made public by Agarwal at a press conference in Delhi on April 27, a year after he had submitted it, made serious allegations about losses said to have been incurred by Doordarshan because of certain deals with regard to the broadcast rights of the ICC Knock-out tournament in Dhaka in October 1998.

The report also had details of the alleged role played by Jagmohan Dalmiya, the president of the ICC, in the cricket negotiations, which cast a long shadow over the recent ICC special session. Dalmiya denies the allegations in the Agarwal report and has started legal proceedings against him.

PAKISTAN is not the only place where sports and politics are mixed. In Greece, the cradle of Western democracy, it seems that the intervention of Juan Antonio Samaranch, the president of the International Olympic Committee, has forced Costas Simitis, the Greek prime minister, to accept a detested political opponent.

The preparation for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens is in such a mess that a furious Samaranch has, uncharacteristically, gone public. This week he sent the IOC's co-ordination commission, headed by Jack Rogge, the urbane Belgian who is the hot favourite to succeed him, to Athens.

The Samaranch solution was simple: get Gianna Anglepolous, the charismatic Greek woman who secured the Olympics for Athens. Because she is in the New Democracy party and the Greek government is run by the socialist, Pasok, Anglepolous has been kept out of the organising committee.

She is close to Samaranch, however, and he has now told the organisers she must be on the committee to help sort things out. Simitis, the Pasok prime minister, will have to grit his teeth and accept Anglepolous and although the Greeks are dressing this up as their own decision, it has been dictated by Samaranch and indicates his anger with them.

But if the Greeks are proving organisationally inept, they have some amazing business ideas. The Olympic flame should make a simple 150-mile journey in 2004 from ancient Olympia to Athens. However, the Greeks, having seen how first Atlanta and now Sydney are using the torch as a business and political tool, plan to send it around the world before bringing it back to Athens for the Games. That means come 2004 that London will get the flame for the first time since 1948, even if it will have to wait a lot longer for the athletes.

The flame's journey to Sydney has already caused problems. Kevan Gosper, the IOC vice-president, denied that he had pulled strings to get his 11-year-old daughter, Sophie, to carry the flame on the first legs of the relay from Olympia.

Gosper issued an abject apology yesterday, in which he denied exerting influence and said that he regretted allowing his daughter's name to go forward as a torch bearer.

The affair may seem insignificant, but in Australia, where sensitivities are high following the IOC corruption scandals and where the ethics commission of the IOC are due to report on Monday on allegations made against Gosper and his family with regard to trips to Salt Lake City, it is seen as a major event.