Cricketers should take lie detector tests, says Waugh

As England and India prepare to do battle in the 2,000th Test match at Lords this week, former Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh has called for the world's best players to undergo lie detector tests.

Waugh is head of a committee working to stamp out corruption in the sport and he believes putting players on the spot is the way forward.

The hard-boiled Aussie, who scored almost 11,000 Test runs and captained Australia when they were at their peak, underwent a polygraph test earlier this year and now he has called for current stars, including the England and Indian skippers Andrew Strauss and MS Dhoni, to do the same.

"Anybody with something to hide would be found out by this process," said Waugh.

He said captains were role models and added: "We are looking for ambassadors among team members to put up a hand and say that down the track they will do one of these polygraph tests to be the role model and the leader in their teams."

The Guardian claims that the comment is a thinly veiled plea for the England and India skippers to take a test, and says they will be privately lobbied to do so over the next few days.

Last summer the sport was rocked by a spot-fixing scandal during the Pakistan tour of England and three of the Pakistani tourists, Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, will appear in court charged with corruption later this year.

The players, accused of deliberately bowling no-balls at certain times, were banned by the ICC after a sting operation by the News of the World.

"Right now the only people that have been caught have been caught by accident or by the media," said Waugh. "So it suggests that it is very hard to catch people who are doing the wrong thing."

He added that putting players through lie detector tests could help catch out wrongdoers.

Quite whether Strauss and Dhoni agree to undergo such a test remains to be seen, as they are busy preparing for a crunch series that sees the two teams fighting it out for top spot in world cricket.

Not only will Lords be hosting the 2,000th ever Test match on Thursday, but legendary Indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar will be looking to score his 100th international and 50th Test hundred at the home of cricket. ·