Former Pakistan captain Rashid Latif has said that the game of cricket, as a whole, is 'far from clean' and as such Pakistan should not be singled out for any allegations of corruption or any other wrongdoing.
According to Sport24, the comment of Latif, who lifted the lid on match-fixing within his own team in 1994, came after a report said that the recently concluded one-day series between Pakistan and the West Indies was being probed by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
Stating that newspaper making the allegations needed to provide the evidence in this case, Latif, who played 37 Tests and 166 one-dayers for Pakistan, said that an ICC official informed him an ICC Champions Trophy match that did not involve Pakistan was suspicious, although he added that there has been no mention ever of the match.
Ruing the fact that only Pakistan matches are reported for any wrongdoing, Latif, who suggested a delay in the broadcast of live matches to curb spot fixing in 2010, further said that either the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) or he will take the newspaper to court if it fails to provide sufficient evidence to back up its report.
According to reports, Pakistan has been badly hit by match-fixing scandals with former leg-spinner Danish Kaneria the latest to face a life-ban over a spot-fixing case during a 2009 county match between Essex and Durham.
However, Latif accused the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) of making Kaneria a scapegoat, saying that right from the beginning, the ECB did not have a strong case against Kaneria, adding that they may have punished Kaneria to show the world that their county cricket was clean from fixing.
According to Latif, the ECB's ego got hurt that an English cricketer got busted in a fixing scandal and with the 2010 case of Pakistan cricketers, the board wanted to prove a point that Pakistani cricketers are the ones who are at the wrong end
Spot-fixing involves the fixing by bookmakers of parts of a game, such as the number of no-balls or the run-rate, while match-fixing is when the outcome of the game is predetermined, the report added.
