Vin­ode Mam­chan

As­sis­tant coach of the West In­dies crick­et team David Williams is call­ing on all crick­eters to be loy­al to the game of crick­et and re­sist any temp­ta­tions that may come their way con­cern­ing match fix­ing. Williams de­scribed match fix­ing as a se­ri­ous prob­lem which could cause ir­repara­ble dam­age to crick­et on the whole. "The temp­ta­tions from book­ies are re­al but the play­ers are big men and they must think things through. They must know what is right and what is wrong and def­i­nite­ly match fix­ing is wrong. The play­ers have to con­sid­er that they are de­stroy­ing the very means of a liveli­hood that they have. When they act in ways that are dis­hon­est, they will on­ly hurt crick­et and they must be own­ers of the game."

Williams says that thank God his play­ers have been on the right side thus far and he hopes this con­tin­ues. "Our play­ers have been do­ing the right things and from what I know they are clean when it comes to things like match fix­ing. This is re­al­ly good for us and we hope that they con­tin­ue in that way be­cause the temp­ta­tion as I said be­fore is re­al." The game of crick­et has been black­ened by match fix­ing al­le­ga­tions for the past decade and on­ly last week four Pak­istani play­ers were in­ter­viewed for al­leged match fix­ing.

This has again thrown the sport in­to dis­re­pute and the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) now has a job on their hands to clean up the sport. Williams be­lieves that the play­ers and of­fi­cials have the pow­er to as­sist in the clean up. "Once the play­ers do the right things, match fix­ing can be elim­i­nat­ed. "They need to be strong and re­sist the temp­ta­tion and I think once this is done the book­ies will get the mes­sage. How­ev­er, this is eas­i­er said than done and it is re­al­ly a mas­sive job to clean up the sport."