Except Samuels, no other player violated ICC code: police

Nagpur, Feb 8: Barring Marlon Samuels of the West Indies, who spoke to a bookie in New Delhi before the team's first One-Day International (ODI) match in Nagpur last month, no other player from either team violated the International Cricket Council (ICC) code of conduct while in the city, the police said today.

Speaking to newspersons here, Police Commissioner S P S Yadav said it was Mukesh Kochchar, a known bookie, who called Samuels up from a mobile phone and they spoke at least thrice before the January 21 tie. The first conversation lasted for about eight minutes around 22:30 hrs on January 19, he said. The second conversation took place for about a minute-and-half on the morning of January 20, and the third and last just before midnight of the same day, Mr Yadav said.

Samuels passed on information about the possible composition of the team, the bowling line-up and the batting order, but there was no mention of any match-fixing per se or exchange of money, he said.

''We cannot say how the information that Samuels passed on to Kochchar could have influenced the outcome of the match,'' he said.

Mr Yadav said that Kochchar probably used different SIM cards for making the calls to the hotel where the West Indies team was put up, and the police had established that the bookie, known to have links with the underworld, was in Faridabad at the time. The caller appeared to presume that the West Indies would bowl first, Mr Yadav said, adding that Kochchar was now believed to be in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

There has been no offence registered against Samuels since he had only violated the ICC code of conduct and not any law of the land, Mr Yadav said. ''We did not register an offence because we could not make out a specific case in this instance. Besides, there is a legal problem in prosecuting someone for 'match fixing' because the intentions of a player cannot be proved,'' he said.

The Nagpur police had written to the ICC and the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) yesterday after closing the investigations, but had not given them the transcripts of the conversation between Samuels and Kochchar, Mr Yadav said. The transcripts had been given to senior officers of the Maharashtra police, he added.

Asked why the Nagpur police had written to the ICC and the BCCI when no offence could be made out, Mr Yadav said it was the duty of the police to inform the organisation concerned if any individual associated with it violated its norms or rules. ''Samuels violated ICC norms, and hence we have informed the body,'' he said.

Mr Yadav said the Kochchar family had a house in Gurgaon, and that the Superintendent of Police there had been informed of the developments in Nagpur. Kochchar was said to deal in property and commodity exports, he said, but denied knowledge whether the alleged bookie had a finance company and if it had a branch in Nagpur.

''Kochchar is being watched, but I cannot say by whom. We do not have any concrete information about any offences pending against him,'' he said.

The police had tapped the telephone lines at the West Indies team hotel only after completing the necessary procedure, Mr Yadav said.

It was a routine practice to keep a watch on suspected bookies, the vicinity of the playground and other sensitive spots whenever a match was played in Nagpur, but the decision to tap the phone lines was made only after receiving certain intelligence inputs, he said.

The BCCI vice-president, Shashank Manohar, who is also president of the Vidarbha Cricket Association (VCA), which hosted the match, had been informed on January 30 itself about the possibility of some important information coming out in connection with the Nagpur tie, he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Yadav informed that four persons have been arrested while betting on today's ODI between India and Sri Lanka from Gandhibagh area of the city, but this was not related to the Samuels case.

The police had seized four mobile telephones, one colour televison and two motorcycles from the four persons, identified as Pramod Yerpude, Punjab Shirpure, Sunil Jain and Lalit Shende, he added.

UNI