Sreesanth & co’s cricketing future rests on BCCI report
Severe action if players found guilty, says BCCI chairman; Ravi Sawani, head of anti-corruption unit, to conduct probe
Chennai: The Indian cricket board will decide whether to ban the three players accused and arrested for spot-fixing in the Indian Premier League (IPL) only after a report by its disciplinary committee.
“Everybody is innocent unless proved guilty, and our actions must be fair," said N. Srinivasan, chairman of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). “We will decide after the disciplinary report."
BCCI held a meeting on Sunday to discuss the controversy surrounding the popular cricket championship. It was decided that Ravi Sawani, the head of BCCI’s anti-corruption unit, will conduct the probe on the spot-fixing.
Severe action will be taken if the accused players are found guilty, Srinivasan said, without elaborating. He also declined to specify the time within which the investigation will be concluded.
The Delhi Police on 16 May arrested Indian pacer S. Sreesanth and his Rajasthan Royals team-mates Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan for indulging in spot-fixing in at least three matches in the Twenty20 tournament.
Spot-fixing involves the manipulation of individual incidents within a match that may not affect the outcome of the contest, most famously exposed in a London trial and jailing of three Pakistan cricketers in 2011.
The players, who have been suspended by BCCI, have been brought to Delhi and charged with cheating and criminal conspiracy.
On Thursday, Delhi Police commissioner Neeraj Kumar said the three bowlers took money to concede a pre-determined number of runs in three different matches.
In June last year, the cricket board had cracked its whip on cricketers caught in an IPL spot-fixing scandal and imposed a life ban on pacer T.P. Sudhindra, but handed lighter punishments to four other domestic players involved in the scandal. Shalabh Srivastav was banned for five years. Mohnish Mishra, Amit Yadav and Abhinav Bali were each banned for a year.
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