All countries involved in match fixing, claims Lord Condon

AS THE dust settles after the conviction of three Pakistani cricketers for spot fixing at a Test match in England last year, the former head of the ICC's anti-corruption unit has claimed that fixing was commonplace throughout the sport just 10 years ago.
 
Lord Condon claimed that match rigging was "routine" in the 1990s and said that players of that era should feel "shame" over their complicity in the situation. He declined to name the countries or players involved.
 
Talking to the London Evening Standard, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner said he believed the practice began in English county cricket in the 1980s when teams would agree to throw matches to manipulate the league standings.
 
"These friendly fixes quickly became more sinister," said Condon. "In the late 1990s, Test and World Cup matches were being routinely fixed. From the late Eighties certainly through to 1999-2000 there were a number of teams involved in fixing."
 
The 64-year-old added: "Every international team, at some stage, had someone doing some funny stuff. A whole generation of cricketers playing in the late 1990s must've known what was going on and did nothing. When they look back on their careers, a bit of shame must creep in."
 
He said match and series fixing had come to an end by 2001, after the creation of the anti-corruption unit. Spot fixing, where certain aspects of the game such as no-balls are manipulated for the benefit of gamblers, had taken over by 2003.
 
The rise of the Twenty20 format added to the sport's lack of "integrity" he lamented. ·