ON the face of it the International Cricket Council are a bunch of full-tossers. As the Salim Malik affair threatens to overshadow the current Test series in Australia and next year's World Cup, the ICC have been surprisingly mute on the subject. What's at stake here is not just the reputations of former Pakistan captain Malik and the Australian trio of Shane Warne, Tim May and Mark Waugh who levelled bribery allegations at him, but the credibility of the sport.
With the Australian Cricket Board rejecting the findings of the independent inquiry headed by ex-Pakistan Supreme Court judge Fakhruddin Ebrahim, who boomeranged the allegations back towards the Aussie trio saying they concocted the story for 'reasons best known to the accusers', surely the time was ripe for the ICC to take a stand. But the cricketing powers-that-be have declared themselves powerless on the issue.
The lame message delivered by its chairman Sir Clyde Walcott was that the alleged bribery offers were made outside a match so the ICC could not become involved. Hang on a minute. Here's a case which threatens to tear cricket apart and the governing body does not have the necessary clout to carry out an investigation - welcome to Jokesville. What they do have, presumably, is the capacity to call an emergency meeting of members so that the outdated constitution can be amended to allow them to act posthaste. The whole messy business needs to be sorted out quickly or next year's World Cup could blow up in the faces of the procrastinating pillocks at the ICC.
The likes of former Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee has already suggested that Warne, May and Waugh be withdrawn from the competition, to be held in Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka, on safety grounds. Pakistan is a pretty hostile cricketing environment for visiting teams at the best of times so it's a good bet that the fans will give the Aussies a rage-filled reception whenever they show their faces in public. And if the animosity spills on to the pitch, a very dangerous situation could develop.
Another disquieting aspect of the case is the failure of the police to investigate claims that Malik offered the Australians money to play poorly during the tour to Pakistan last year. Similar bribery allegations against former Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar are due to be heard in an English court on December 1 and the crime-busters in Malaysia have charged scores of footballers involved in corruption. With sworn evidence against Malik from the Australians surely it should have been a court of law which handled the case and not a toothless tribunal. That, too, is something the ICC can address when it wakes up to the crises in its midst.
