Caught Out - Shocking Revelations of Corruption in International Cricket. Brian Radford
up from his chair, and said he was pleased to meet me.’
Omar said he told Zia that he was working in religion, and Zia said: ‘You are in the news again.’ Omar replied: ‘Yes, and I am speaking the truth,’ to which the General responded that if he was now in religion, he should stay away from controversial issues.
‘I told him that if the Pakistan Cricket Board had listened to me many years ago, it would not have got caught up in drug scandals and match-fixing,’ said Omar. ‘But people took no notice of what I was saying.’ Then General Zia had said: ‘When there was a gambling inquiry, why didn’t you come?’
Omar had replied: ‘First of all, you people dragged it on for years and years, but not a single player was mentioned. If you had invited me over [from England, where he lived with his family in Durham], I would have come.’ Omar told Zia that he was going back to the ICC’s Anti-corruption Unit and would tell them what he had seen other players doing, and they should not expect him to keep quiet.
‘I asked him if he was saying that no one knew about these people, when I knew,’ Omar told the ACU, ‘and I asked him: “What about my problem when you banned me? Don’t expect me to stay quiet. If I see anything, I’m going to speak out.” I admitted to him that I’d been involved [in cricket corruption], and that I’d apologised for that, and that I was young and naïve when it happened.’
Zia had asked Omar how they could eliminate things like match-fixing and players under-performing and taking money from bookies. Omar said he was amazed that Zia didn’t know what match-forecasting meant, and had to explain it to him.
‘I told him that players, and captains in particular, took money from bookmakers for letting them know whether they would bat if they won the toss, and what the batting order would be, and who was in the team. And if the captain decided to field, he would tell the bookmaker which player would open the bowling and which end of the ground he would bowl from. This was all new to him. I was shocked that he could be so badly out of touch.
‘I told him that if any money was on offer, certain cricketers would grab it, as lots of them have a short career and didn’t earn a great deal, so they would take risks to earn a bit extra.’
(Condon was due to meet Zia sometime shortly after his chat with Omar, so Omar’s advice to the General was perfectly timed – without that information he would have been highly embarrassed and would have looked stupid.)
With the ACU tape-recorder still whirring, Omar then named a prominent Pakistan player who had said privately that Pakistan matches in New Zealand had been fixed, and that a Pakistan bookmaker, who ran a catering business in Karachi, had assured him that a leading Pakistan batsman had pocketed the equivalent of £100,000 from fixing matches in New Zealand. Omar named this dodgy player, and said that he also knew the bookmaker extremely well, and that he had stayed with him at his home near Karachi airport.
Names of alleged crooked cricketers cascaded from Omar’s relentless tongue as the ACU interview gained momentum, and the next player to be identified was yet another hugely successful Pakistan batsman who, according to Omar, had regularly called at the home of a leading bookmaker in a village near Peshawar, and that the player and bookmaker had gone to tournaments together where matches were fixed.
Omar then switched his fusillade of disclosures to Australia, where he claimed that 23 ‘stunning’ girls had worked as high-class hookers for a bookmaker to provide additional perks for players who fixed matches. Apart from one Pakistani model and a Chinese doctor, the girls were all attractive Australians, and Omar named them all, and even provided their telephone numbers and addresses.
He said the network had been set up in the mid-Eighties and stretched right across Australia, from Brisbane to Perth. Over the years the hookers had included a nurse, a schoolteacher, a travel agent and a glamorous television presenter. Two madams ran the sleazy operation from their homes in Sydney. Omar named them both. He also assured Condon and his team that an identical ‘girls-as-perks’ scandal was being run by a bookmaker in New Zealand, and he named him.
Omar listed some of cricket’s biggest Test stars as having had sex with the go-anywhere hookers, in addition to pocketing large sums of money from bookmakers, both in Australia and New Zealand. Most of the deals were struck secretly in team hotels, with the Sheraton in Sydney a popular rendezvous, plus a restaurant in Sydney’s seedy red light district and a McDonald’s in Melbourne.
One leading Asian bowler was named as having deliberately under-performed in several matches because he desperately needed money for a house he was building. Another bowler was alleged to have faked injury straight after Test matches in order to be paid big money by a bookmaker for not playing in friendly four-day games. This information enabled the bookmaker to land large bets on forecasting who would not be in the Pakistan team.
Omar also revealed that players were pocketing big money for deliberately dropping catches – information that would have infuriated spectators if the truth had ever got out. Omar told Condon and his investigators that the New Zealand hookers usually went to a player’s hotel room for sex, and that one grateful bookmaker also provided porn movies as an additional perk. Specific incidents in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch – the country’s three main cricket centres – were graphically recalled.
At the time Condon was receiving this astonishing information, ICC President Malcolm Gray was warning that the match-fixing scandal could get seriously worse. Alarmingly, he stated: ‘I can assure you that it has been a lot deeper and broader than anyone realised or expected, and I suspect we might get hit with more bad news.’
His disturbing prediction was spot on, which Omar soon confirmed, pointing out that teams from England, the West Indies, Pakistan and India were all in Australia when the sex perk was at its peak.
Yet another shock hit the ACU’s investigators when Omar revealed that an apparently squeaky-clean director of a large company with its headquarters in Western Australia had masterminded the ‘hooker rewards’ operation that was organised with such military precision.
Omar admitted that several of these hookers had been sent to him, but he insisted that he always rejected their sexual favours, though he did enjoy an occasional massage from them and went out for drinks and meals – but that was as far as it went.
Focus was placed on the elusive ‘Mr Fixit’, who was described by Omar as the ‘smooth wealthy director’ whom he named, and he provided business and home addresses. Omar described the director as ‘tall and smart’ and said that he always called him ‘son’. ‘He would say “Hello, son!” or “Thank you, son!” and “Well done, son!” He never called me Qasim, or Omar. He would come to see me before the start of a match, and sometimes during the lunch or tea breaks.
‘We got to know each other well after I scored 48 in the first innings of the First Test against Australia in Perth when I was caught by Graham Yallop off bowler Carl Rackerman. That innings impressed a lot of good cricket judges, including the great Richie Benaud, the Australian bowling legend who was commentating on the match for a TV channel. These people, like Benaud, could not believe that a young newcomer could play such fast bowling with so much courage.
‘When I returned to the team’s hotel, I found that a T-shirt and a nice pen, with the name of a company stamped on it, had been left at reception for me, and later in the evening a man rang my room and praised my innings. He invited me to dinner and, after saying who he was, he handed me an expensive Rado wristwatch, which I later sold in Karachi because I found it too heavy to wear.’
Omar recalled that the mystery man introduced himself as a director of a large company, which he named, and said that he could use money from the company to bet on cricket. He also mentioned the name of a leading Pakistan bookmaker, and said that he knew him well.
Omar was shocked that the director knew this bookmaker, and he recalled: ‘He then said that a number of leading Pakistani batsmen had taken money from him for throwing their wickets away, and that he would “look after me” if I threw my wicket away in the second innings, preferably without scoring a run.
‘I