Calls for probe into India-Pakistan World Cup semi

KARACHI: The former head of Pakistan’s cricket board yesterday called for an investigation into his country’s 2011 World Cup semifinal against India after a new book raised the possibility the game was fixed.
Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper published extracts of a book by sports-betting journalist Ed Hawkins in which he claimed an Indian bookmaker had accurately predicted what would happen in Pakistan’s innings against their arch-rivals.
Hawkins said the bookmaker, Parthiv, sent him a Twitter message during the Indian innings correctly calling that when Pakistan batted, they would reach 100 easily then lose two wickets quickly, reach 150 with five down and lose by more than 20 runs.
India won the match by 29 runs to book their place in the final where they beat Sri Lanka to claim their second World Cup.
Hawkins does not make any specific allegation of match fixing but cites a statistician as saying the odds of the bookmaker predicting the outcome in such detail purely by chance would be 405 to one against.
Suspicions were raised at the time, particularly over Pakistan’s sloppy fielding — they dropped Indian batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar four times as he made a match-winning 85.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) rejected the allegations in April 2011, saying there was no evidence to require an investigation into the match, but Ijaz Butt, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) at the time, said there should be a probe.
“My suggestion would be that the matter should be investigated,” Butt told ARY news channel in Pakistan.
“There were a lot of allegations in Indian newspapers and even in Pakistani newspapers but there was no investigation.” Pakistan were in the thick of a fixing scandal a month before the semi-final when three of their top players — Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer — were handed long bans by the ICC for arranging no-balls to order during a Test against England in 2010.
The PCB refused to give any official reaction to the allegations.