The former Test wicketkeeper Thami Tsolekile has been revealed as one of the players under investigation in the Twenty20 corruption scandal that has rocked South African cricket.
The Guardian has learned Tsolekile, who played the last of his three Tests for South Africa 12 years ago but has been in their squad as recently as March 2014, is alleged to have been paid at least R75,000 (£3,100) to improperly influence an aspect of last year’s Ram Slam competition.
Tsolekile captained the Highveld Lions in the tournament and, according to Cricket South Africa’s anti-corruption code, could face a minimum five-year ban if found guilty of wrongdoing.
Players can also be criminally charged under the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act, which contains a clause for sporting events. The law was passed in 2004, four years after the former South Africa captain Hansie Cronje received a life ban from cricket for match-fixing.
At least one more former South Africa player is believed to be under investigation, while a number of domestic cricketers are facing possible charges of failing to report approaches.
Last week the former South Africa one-day all-rounder Gulam Bodi was named as the “intermediary” charged by Cricket South Africa in December for allegedly attempting to recruit players for the Ram Slam T20 scam.
Bodi, who is cooperating with the investigation, played two one-day internationals and a Twenty20 for South Africa in 2007. His last professional game was in January last year, when he played alongside Tsolekile for the Lions.
Tsolekile has not played for the Lions since the Ram Slam tournament last month, missing four matches in the domestic first-class competition including last week’s fixture with the Knights in Kimberley. The 35-year-old, whose Lions team finished second from bottom of the six-team Ram Slam competition, has captained South Africa A and the country’s under-19 team.
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When contacted by the Guardian, Tsolekile said: “No I don’t know anything about that. And I don’t want to comment anything about that.”
A spokesperson for Cricket South Africa declined to comment while the investigation is continuing.
It has been established Bodi began to make overtures to players during the Africa T20 Cup, a season curtain-raiser played between 4 September and 4 October designed to give exposure to South Africa’s semi-professional players.
During that time Bodi approached a player from the Titans franchise who rejected his offer but who is now under investigation for failing to report his advances.
Similar to the manner in which Cronje operated in the late 1990s, Bodi is understood to have pretended his offer was a joke once it had been rejected by the player.
South Africa’s cricketers receive regular education on anti-corruption and were given a stark reminder of the pitfalls of fixing in early November, during the early stages of the Ram Slam tournament.
As part of a joint initiative between the South African Cricketers’ Association and the Professional Cricketers’ Association in England, players from the six franchises were given a presentation and had a Q&A session with the convicted spot-fixer Mervyn Westfield.
The former Essex fast bowler served eight weeks of a four-month jail sentence and was banned from professional cricket for five years for accepting an offer of £6,000 to deliberately bowl badly in a Pro40 game against Durham in September 2009.
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Westfield was also banned from participating in club cricket for three years, although that was reduced after he agreed to assist in a PCA-run anti-corruption programme.
At the same meetings that Westfield told the South African players his story, it is understood the CSA anti-corruption chief, Louis Cole, informed the players that suspicious characters had already been spotted at televised matches.
Twenty-two of the 32 games in the Ram Slam T20 were broadcast overseas, including in India.
On 6 November, four games into the tournament, a CSA press release said the organisation had warned players “after gathering intelligence that an international syndicate is attempting to corrupt domestic cricket in South Africa.”
While the governing body was aware of the threat early on in the competition and may have prevented a large number of matches from being corrupted, the fact that 47 players and staff are understood to have been spoken to in the evidence-gathering process since leaves no doubt as to the scale of the problem.
Source :
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...le-south-africa-cricket-match-fixing-ram-slam
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