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Waugh for clean up of cricket

Manick Banerjee in Barrackpore

Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh today said at the moment cricket no longer seems to be a gentleman's game and asked cricket administrators to help restore its lost prestige.

''The recent happenings in cricket are very unfortunate. It's a shame. But most of the cricketers are good people. We should try to bring the game back to the backpages for the right reasons,'' Waugh said.

Interacting with the newspersons at leprosy patients' children welfare home Udayan after formally inaugurating its girls wing, built with funds raised by him, the most successful cricket captain of recent times said, '' All inquiry commissions set up to probe betting and match-fixing allegations will have to go into the bottom of things. They should take some hard decisions and clean up the whole thing.''

Asked to comment on former South African skipper Hansie Cronje's confession, Steve said, ''Cronje has made a mistake. I know him as a good human being. It is tough for me to make any judgement. I don't know all about it. The inquiry will find out whether he did any wrong.''

Asked whether the ICC was to be blamed for inaction in match-fixing and betting allegations made earlier, the Aussie skipper said, ''All I hear are rumours. The bottomline is that there should not be any temptations. Only way of getting out of it is that people involved in it should be held responsible''.

To a question whether he felt that ICC had enough authority to deal with the present crisis, Waugh said, ''It's a very big and difficult job. Individual cricket boards in each country also have a role to play''.

"Though ICC president Jagmohan Datmiya lives in Calcutta where I will be staying during my three-day visit, I have no plan to meet him," Waugh said.

Commenting on the fines imposed on Mark Waugh and Shane Warne, Steve said, ''What they did was to provide information about weather and pitch which is normally done by the commentators. However, I don't support what they did''.

Steme emphasised that 99.9 per cent cricketers are doing the right things. ''Only a few are going wrong. There would be temptations, but one should overcome them'', Steve added.

UNI