NEW DELHI, (Reuters) – Indian batting great Sachin Tendulkar is shocked by the spot-fixing scandal swirling around the country’s popular Twenty20 league and urged authorities to get to the bottom of the controversy yesterday.
The May 16 arrest of three cricketers, including former test bowler Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, have exposed Indian cricket’s soft underbelly.
Delhi Police have accused the trio of taking money from bookmakers to concede a pre-determined number of runs in Indian Premier League (IPL) matches but the cricketers have denied any wrongdoing.
“It has always hurt me when the game of cricket is in the news for the wrong reasons,” Tendulkar , who quit IPL after his team won the sixth edition of the tournament on Sunday, said in a statement to the media.
“The developments in the last two weeks have been shocking and disappointing. As cricketers, we are always taught to go out, fight hard, give our very best and play in the true spirit of the game.
“During this difficult phase, I join every cricketer… who trust the authorities to take sincere steps to get to the root of the issue,” the 40-year-old player added.
Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Sanjay Jagdale and treasurer Ajay Shirke annouced they had quit on Friday in the wake of the spot-fixing scandal.
Their departures could intensify the pressure on board president N Srinivasan to quit after his son-in-law and IPL Chennai franchise official Gurunath Meiyappan was arrested as part of the investigation.
The scandal has shaken India’s belief in their cricketing idols and there has been outrage over the roles of the politicians holding key positions in the cricket board.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was posed the question on Friday while returning from a foreign trip, with a journalist asking him about possible government intervention in the scandal.
“They are under investigations and it won’t be proper for me to comment on the stage of investigations,” Singh said.
“I would only hope that politics and sports don’t get mixed up,” he added.
