Richardson puts Pakistan-England match fixing rumours to rest

David Richardson says he is 'not too suspicious' England-Pakistan ODI

Amid speculation that the third ODI between Pakistan and England in Sharjah, but David Richardson, the chief executive of the International Cricket Council (ICC) has expressed that he is “not too suspicious” about the matter, reports IBN Live.

The British tabloid Daily Mail had alleged that the match was under investigation on grounds of unusual batting patterns. According to this report, the investigators has previous knowledge of what would happen in the match - that Pakistan would not perform upto its capacity.

On top of that, it claimed that three run outs and shoddy fielding along with easy dismissal of batsmen made the match suspicious. Azhar Ali, Mohammad Rizwan and Shoaib Malik are the three run-outs mentioned above.Pakistan lost the match by six wickets, scoring 208 on a flat pitch.

Richardson said that such odd run-outs were a part of cricket. "Yes, there could be odd occasions, there would be some strange run outs, in fact I have been run out on more occasions than I care to remember", he said.

"Even Pakistan players themselves these days are reporting every approach that seems to come their way and I wouldn't be too suspicious," said Richardson.

"I am pretty positive about where cricket is at the moment in the battle of keeping cricket clean, the level of education that the international players go through now," he said, regarding the progress made in the cricketing world against corruption.

He also talked about T20s being included in the Olympics. It has already been a part of the Asian Games in 2010 in China and Incheon in 2014 in South Africs, but the Olympic efforts have not led to a final conclusion as of yet.

"We met the IOC president and we have really explored the possibilities, at least we are talking, and we are open to the opportunity if it's worthwhile to include cricket in Olympics," Richardson told BBC radio.

"If the ICC is committed then we have to overcome the hurdle of the IOC accepting cricket because there are a lot of other sports that want inclusion in the 2024 Olympics," said Richardson.

"But it's not as simple as that and there are lot of issues that you need to consider and the Olympics might not want cricket, they don't want second rate teams and they don't want Micky Mouse format, they want our major format, the Twenty20," said Richardson.