A former joint-director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), K Madhavan was commissioner during the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) match-fixing inquiry in 2000. Madhavan was appointed by the then president, Dr A C Muthiah, best remembered for his tough stand.
Madhavan (75), if approached by current BCCI president N Srinivasan, is “willing” to conduct the enquiry into the fresh spot-fixing allegations in the Indian Premier League. The IPL governing council yesterday suspended five players (TP Sudhindra, Mohnish Mishra, Shalabh Srivastava, Amit Yadav and Abhinav Bali) who were shown in a sting operation conducted by India TV alleging corruption in the T20 league.
“I am a lawyer now and would not mind doing this exercise again,” he told MiD DAY from Delhi yesterday. Madhavan felt the BCCI should send the original videotape of the sting to experts. “I am aware about the recent claims, but have not seen the complete footage. The BCCI should obtain the original sting operation videotape and send it to the experts. They should also take necessary remedial measures,” Madhavan said.
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On the basis of Madhavan’s 162-page report, the BCCI had banned Mohammed Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja, Manoj Prabhakar and Ajay Sharma in December 2000. While Azharuddin and Sharma received life bans, Prabhakar and Jadeja were served five-year bans. “The BCCI can only initiate departmental action against the alleged players, if found guilty, because they (the players) are not government servants,” he said.
If found guilty of spot-fixing, the Indian cricketers won’t be sent to prison like their Pakistani counterparts last year. “The laws in Great Britain are different,” he said. Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamir were imprisoned for spot-fixing last year.u00a0Madhavan declined to state whether the introduction of T20 was the root cause of spot-fixing in cricket.
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