Caught Out - Shocking Revelations of Corruption in International Cricket. Brian Radford
match in Sydney, and later on in Brisbane.’
In the second innings of that Test match, wicketkeeper Rodney Marsh caught Omar when he was on 65, and Rackerman was again the bowler.
Proud of his performance, Omar said: ‘People in the media rated my innings the best seen in Australia for many years, as I was so young and had no experience of facing such fast bowlers on such a fast wicket. My innings was played over and over again on television.’
Omar recalled that the Pakistan team travelled straight to Sydney after that Test match, and that a woman called Wendy was waiting for him in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel when the team arrived. She handed him an envelope containing a letter and A$500.
Omar told the investigators: ‘The letter said that a woman called Wendy would “look after me” and I knew exactly what that meant. Wendy told me that the company director had asked her to hand it to me, and she invited me to dinner at a different hotel, where she said that I had to score less than 50 in my first innings. She also predicted that Pakistan would be dismissed for a low score, and she was right. Greg Matthews took lots of wickets and bowled me for 25.
‘Wendy rang my room again in the evening and we went to a restaurant in Sydney’s famous red light district, where we both dined on kebabs.’
Wendy joked with Omar that he should not eat too many kebabs, and claimed that she had been smart and slim before she put on lots of weight from eating this type of food.
According to Omar it was all very relaxed, and he and Wendy got on really well. She knew a lot about cricket, and she surprised him when she named a leading Australian batsman who had worked as a match-fixer for the company director, who had paid him big money for letting him know the team, which bowler would open the attack, and from which end of the ground.
She also named two other Australian players who had ‘taken lots of money from the director to throw their wickets away’.
One of Pakistan’s biggest bookmakers, who travelled all over the world to Test matches, had told Omar that one of these two Australian players had been offered as much as 25,000 dollars to lose his wicket deliberately. Omar told the investigators that this disappointed him a lot because this very popular player had been his hero.
Wendy also told him that a lot of money was being bet on a certain Australian player ending up in an unusual fielding position for him in a Test match during the series.
Holding nothing back, Omar admitted: ‘I was offered 1,000 dollars if I scored less than 25 in the first innings of the Test match in Brisbane, and 2,000 dollars if I did exactly the same in the second innings. Kim Hughes caught me off Geoff Lawson’s bowling in the first innings when I was on 17, and I was on 11 in the second innings when it rained heavily and the match was drawn.’
Next day a number of local newspapers published a quirky picture of Omar standing on the outfield in wellies, and holding a brolly over his head.
He then recalled that one Pakistan bowler was paid by a bookmaker not to play in a number of domestic games, so he faked injuries after Test matches, took big money for doing it, was able to stay out late at discos and casinos, and ended up with a girl who got pregnant.
Adelaide was the team’s next stop and Omar was surprised to find several girls lining up to see him when the team coach arrived at the hotel. He recalled: ‘My director friend had sent them. Wendy was not there this time; a girl called Jill Gabriel had taken over. Just like Wendy had done before, she took me out for a meal in the evening and offered me cash to throw my wicket away. I refused and told her to explain to the director that my place in the team was not guaranteed yet.’
Omar, however, did promise her that he would let them know where certain Pakistan players would appear in the batting order, and who would bowl and from which end. It turned out to be a terrific Test match for Omar, who hit a brilliant 113 in the first innings before he was caught.
Omar told the investigators that when Wendy returned to the cricket circuit she introduced him to a Chinese girl called Kit Wong who controlled betting outlets for Chinese bookmakers and gamblers, and that they discussed plans for him to throw his wicket away, and that she offered him 800 US dollars to do it.
Wendy tried hard to persuade Omar to introduce her to his famous captain, Imran Khan, a legend in world cricket, but he refused, insisting that he never introduced girls to players or dealt in drugs.
He said: ‘Wendy even sent an attractive escort called Tara to Imran, but a security guard spotted her in the corridor just as she was about to knock on his door, and she was marched out of the hotel because she looked too young to be visiting him.
‘When we reached Tasmania, yet another girl, this time called Janet, had left a message for me. I met her at a bar close to the hotel, and I agreed to score fewer than 50 in both innings. She said that big bets had been placed on me to hammer the Tasmanian bowlers. Money and gifts poured in throughout the rest of that Australian tour and I earned around 8,000 US dollars in total for doing what I was asked.’
It was close to 3pm in Condon’s office when Omar suddenly broke off from his conveyor belt of startling revelations and asked, with some urgency, for a mat. Peacock, Hawkins and I were bamboozled. Condon was not present when this commotion was taking place.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ I asked Omar. ‘What’s your problem?’ He didn’t say a word, didn’t even look across at me but raised his voice, threatening to walk out and never come back unless someone found him a mat.
With time running out, Omar explained that as a devout Muslim he prayed up to five times a day, and as he was now too far from the nearest mosque, he had to have a mat to kneel on for prayers at three o’clock. Desperate not to lose him, Peacock and Hawkins darted from room to room in search of a mat, but could find nothing suitable – until Peacock came up with an idea. ‘What about a newspaper?’ Peacock asked, gingerly. ‘Will that do? Can you manage with that?’
‘Yes,’ Omar replied. ‘Where is it?’
Trouble was, there was no newspaper to be found in the office, so one of the investigators rushed into the street and returned with a pristine copy of the London Evening Standard, which Omar folded neatly, placed on the floor in front of him, and knelt on for 15 minutes, saying his prayers while the rest of us waited silently in an adjoining room until he had finished.
With his prayers happily out of the way, Omar returned to plying the investigators with yet more information, vividly recalling an evening in Wellington when two young prostitutes went to the hotel where the Pakistan team was staying and offered Omar ‘a massage that he would never forget!’
Suddenly chuckling, as the memorable occasion crossed his mind, Omar said: ‘I told them “No thanks, please go away,” but I was told later that the hotel was swarming with high-class hookers who had been sent along by a bookie in return for our team batting and bowling badly. Lots of players might have under-performed on the field, but I’m pretty sure they did their best when the girls arrived! They were terrific!’
Omar admitted to the investigators that he threw his wicket away in the first innings of a three-day friendly match in Christchurch, but scored a century in the second innings to secure his place in the Pakistan team for the First Test in Wellington. He recalled that soon after Pakistan arrived in New Zealand, two of his team-mates introduced him to a hotel owner who also operated as a bookmaker and provided hookers and cash in return for ‘inside’ information.
‘This man offered me 1,000 US dollars to score fewer than 50 in my first innings in the Test in Auckland,’ Omar said. ‘It was very tempting and I said yes, though on this occasion I had no intention of doing it. I took a chance and accepted the money and, as it turned out, I was caught for 33. It was a genuine bat-pad catch, though it seemed to the bookie that I did it deliberately, just as he had asked me to.’
Omar remembered vividly that his paymaster was ecstatic about what he had apparently done, and in the evening he took a ‘gorgeous’ girl round to his hotel and asked Omar if he would like to invite her