Thaindian News

London, Nov 5 (IANS) England’s Test captain Andrew Strauss has called the world cricket body’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) a “toothless tiger” following the spot-fixing scandal that resulted in imprisonment of three Pakistani players.

Bookmaker Mazhar Majeed along with players Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer were given jail terms by a London court Thursday after being found guilty of spot-fixing during the team’s away series in England last year.

Strauss said his main concern was that the spot-fixing episode was brought to light by defunct tabloid News of the World and International Cricket Council’s ACSU played no role in it.

“For me, there is still a lot of questions to be answered because they weren’t exposed by any of the cricketing members, they were exposed by the News of the World,” Strauss was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

“I still think the ICC could be doing a lot more than they are doing. Unfortunately, the anti-corruption unit is a pretty toothless tiger. They can’t get into the real depth of it all because they haven’t got the resources available to them.

“I don’t hold it against them, they are doing the best job they possibly can. They can’t do sting operations like the News of the World; they can’t infiltrate these betting networks. They have tried their best.

Strauss hoped that only a handful of cricketers were involved in the menace called spot-fixing.

“I am very hopeful that only a minor percentage of cricketers are involved in it, hopefully that is the case but the truth is we really don’t know.”

On the court verdict, Strauss added: “It is hard to be happy or satisfied when something like this happens. I think it is fantastic that there has been some sort of repercussions for what these guys did and there is some sort of deterrent there.”