Former Australia captain Steve Waugh has taken a lie-detector test as part of his bid to help root corruption out of cricket. Waugh believes making players submit to examination by lie-detectors, or polygraphs as they are also known, could help drive cheats from the game. As a member of the world cricket committee of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which owns Lord’s, Waugh volunteered to undergo a test to confirm he had never been involved in corruption in cricket. MCC arranged for him to be tested by Steven van Aperen who, it said in a statement issued on Tuesday, was one of “Australia’s leading polygraph examiners”.
The MCC statement added: “Steve Waugh passed this test convincingly.” Waugh was spurred into action following last year’s revelations by Britain’s now defunct News of the World tabloid that former Pakistan captain Salman Butt, Aamer and Mohammad Asif were all involved in the deliberate bowling of no-balls. Polygraph tests cannot be used as evidence in an English criminal court and the MCC statement added: “The (world cricket) committee accepts that the use of polygraph tests is a sensitive subject but their potential use should now be widely debated in the game. “The Working Party hopes to meet, in the near future, with the ICC Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU), to present MCC’s thorough analysis of polygraph testing.” ACSU officials have found themselves on the defensive over accusations they have not done enough to rid cricket of corruption.
