London: The England and Wales Cricket Board are set to charge Lou Vincent and his former Sussex team mate Naved Arif with fixing the outcome of a county match, Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Thursday. The Telegraph said former New Zealand batsman Vincent, who has already confessed to fixing, and Arif, a Pakistani, were being charged in connection with a 40-over match between Sussex and Kent at Hove in August 2011.
If the pair are found guilty, it would be the first proven case of the result of a county match being fixed. The Sussex-Kent match which was televised live and, which the paper said attracted bets totalling more than £12 million on one regulated gambling website alone, the highest total for any match of its kind in the past three years, and millions more on illegal markets in India.
Meanwhile, New Zealand skipper Brendon McCullum said he had no regrets about his leaked evidence to a corruption probe. McCullum said he stood by his testimony to the International Cricket Council, in which he reportedly told investigators that a high-profile cricketer dubbed “Player X” unsuccessfully attempted to recruit him in a match-fixing scam in 2008.
