No substance in Modi charges, says ICC

The International Cricket Council on Monday corroborated BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur’s assertion that there was no evidence against the three international players, who were accused of having been benefitted either in cash or kind by a Mumbai realtor, also an alleged bookie, in an email by Lalit Modi to ICC CEO Dave Richardson in June 2013.

To a pointed question at the post-Indian team selection press meet in New Delhi on Monday, Thakur said: "Lalit Modi had written a letter to ICC, so they informed BCCI about the letter.

The three players are international players so they fall under the international jurisdiction that is of the ICC. If the ICC has not taken action, it means there's a clean chit.”

The ICC on Sunday, while confirming the receipt of an email by ousted IPL chief Modi, had said that the ACSU handled that information in accordance with its standard operating procedures, which included sharing it with the BCCI’s anti-corruption unit.

Asked to comment on Thakur’s statement, an ICC spokesman admitted that there was nothing incriminating against the two current India players and a West Indies’ all-rounder, all of whom were mentioned in the mail.

“Look, the ICC receives hundreds of such emails every day,” he said. “And we can’t take all of them seriously because many of them are mere innuendos. But in this case the person who was making the accusation happened to be a former prominent cricket administrator, so we took it seriously. Mr Richardson wasted no time in referring the matter to the ACSU (Anti-Corruption and Security Unit) which investigated the matter and found nothing that could implicate the players,” he said.

When asked if the BCCI can wash its hands off saying that all three were international players and hence it was ICC’s responsibility to deal with the matter despite the fact that the reported activities were related to the Indian Premier League which is conducted by the Indian Board, he shot back saying the email doesn’t explicitly say the allegations were related to the T20 league.

Is it then a coincidence that all three players belong to the same IPL franchise? “The protocol can’t be changed because you have drawn some inference. Fact is, these are international players and the ACSU probed the matter accordingly and in any case it found no substance in the allegations. If there was any iota of truth then it wouldn’t have taken us more than two years to press the charges. We conveyed the same to the BCCI’s anti-corruption unit which is a normal procedure.”

At his New Delhi press conference, Thakur also spoke about the incident of a player being approached for spot-fixing ahead of the 2015 IPL. "The enquiry is still not over. We have to look at the detailed report. Once the final report comes in then we will take action. We don't disclose the name of the players. If a player has been approached, we report it to the anti-corruption unit," Thakur said.