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We need a complete clean-up: Waugh

Zakia Maryam in Barrackpore

Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh today said that Hansie Cronje's confession to accept money from bookmakers was a shame. He was speaking to reporters after inaugurating the girls' wing of Udyan leprosy home here.

" I still respect Hansie as a human being and he is a nice guy. He made mistakes and it is not my prerogative to judge him. Enquiry is on and they will make ultimate decisions. The bottom line is that it is up to every individual to do right thing as a player. There shouldn't be any temptation to take money.Whatever has happened recently is obviously a shame," Steve remarked.

He said that the betting and match fixing was not new in world of cricket. "It is not something which is happening in the past four months. It has been going on for little while now . The concerned authorities will have to make some hard decisions to stem the rot."

Defending his brother Mark and his teammate, Shane Warne both of whom had confessed to have receive money from bookmakers in the past , Steve said that the duo had accepted the money only to divulge the weather information.

"What Shane and Mark did was merely to provide information on the wicket and weather which all the commentators do on TV . But, yes, I agree they did a wrong a thing. What I say that they didn't commit a major offence. Come on, we are talking about match-fixing and bribery. These are the major issues to be addressed and the concerned authorities have to pinpoint the culprits whosoever he might be."

Though the organisers had made it absolutely clear that Steve would not be answering queries on cricket, they couldn't prevent the shrewd mediamen from dragging into the match fixing controversy.

It all began with rediff.com asking Steve to comment on whether the future generation would look towards the cricketers as their role models in the wake of current crisis in the game.This question was in response to Steve's remarks that he was planning to take the entire Australian side down to Barrackpore to play an exhibition match for the leper kids.

Steve said, "Well I hope so. Whatever has happened recently is unfortuate.Everyone is human and people make mistake. I am sure that is the case with everybody, not just cricketers. But the more important thing is that most of the cricketers are very helpful with regard to charitable works. Cricket is known as a gentleman's game;but probably not at the moment. We don't know what has been happening. And let's try . As I said, most cricketers are doing right things. It is just a few people who have done the wrong things and that has tarnished everyone. 99 per cent players are doing the rights things and it is only few players that are not doing the right things which is unfortunately tarnishing the game."

Time and again the charismatic skipper of Australia maintained that despite the flowing allegation, the players should have tried to get cricket back to where it should have been. . He further added that people who had brought disgrace to the game had to pay the prices at some stage and "that's going to happen."

" We 've got to clear it all up and get cricket back on the right height," Steve said.

How soon did he expect the mandarins of the ICC to clear up muck ?

Steve said " People are setting commissions everywhere to try and inquire what's going on. As soon as they find what's wrong and who is responsible for that, I guess people doing wrong things will be held responsible. There is one way that cricket can get wriggled out of this menace is that the people held responsible will have to pay prices for what they have done. The people who are doing the inquiries , have to be honest in order to clean the game up."

Steve played quite diplomatically when asked to comment on the ICC's failure to tackle the menace. According to him, it was quite a Herculean task for the ICC to clean up the mess. "I don't want to blame anyone.A lot of times there are so much of words against another person. So,.how do you prove that it is very difficult to prove unless you have some concrete evidence. You can't prove anything. I am sure ICC has realised it is a major problem and if they don't clear up, the cricket is going to be poorer and someone has to take the initiative and do the hard work."

He hoped that the inquiries instituted by a few boards in the wake of Cronje episode, would help the ICC bring those indulging in "unethical practices." He also denied of ever being approached any bookmakers. " If indeed they ever dare to approach me they will be disappointed since I'LL never consider such offer."