Australian Test and one-day captain Michael Clarke said Friday he was “100 percent confident” that no Australian cricketers were involved in match-fixing. His comments followed allegations made in a London court this week implicating Australian players during the corruption trial of ex-Pakistan cricket captain Salman Butt and fast bowler Mohammad Asif. “Me personally, I have never been approached by anyone,” he said on his departure for South Africa for a three-match one-day series that kicks off on October 19 ahead of Tests in Cape Town and Johannesburg in November.
“The players I have played with, I’m 100 percent confident they would never be involved in that,” he added on the Cricket Australia website. “It is not the Australian way. Never in my time have I experienced a conversation with anybody about any such things.” He admitted that some Australian cricketers had been approached, but it had always been reported to the authorities. “There has obviously been a couple of occasions where guys (in our team) have been approached and that has been reported to our team manager and to the International Cricket Council,” he said.
“So all the boys in the Australian team are aware that it is happening and that it is going on. “But, like I said, it has never involved me and I’m very confident that it has never involved any of the Australian players.” The fixing claims emerged as Mazher Mahmood, the former investigations editor for Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World, gave evidence at the trial of Butt and Asif on Tuesday. In recordings played to Southwark Crown Court, an agent, Mazhar Majeed, alleged that Australians, as well as some of the biggest names in Pakistani cricket, were prepared to fix parts of matches.
Majeed claimed Australian players would fix “brackets”, a set period of a match on which punters bet. Cricket Australia chief James Sutherland has blasted the claims as baseless. “These comments or allegations would appear to be outlandish and were made by a person of dubious repute,” he said this week. “These would appear to be baseless allegations.”
