Undercover agents posing as illegal bookmakers could be used to approach cricketers to see if they report the encounters, under a radical proposal by the ICC to fight corruption.
Players who fail to report the approaches from the agents would be penalised under the anti-corruption code, and will face punishments ranging from warnings to fines and suspensions. The plan is still under consideration and will be discussed at length by the ICC in later meetings but is a reflection of the governing body's intention to be seen to be proactive in its anti-corruption drive.
The idea was put to ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat and he told The Age that it's just one of a number of plans the ICC is considering. ''We are thinking of setting up our own approaches to players, to see if they report it, we will think out of the box."
''It is only a tentative plan at this stage, we are working on a number of measures to combat corruption. We are not sitting on our hands on this issue, we are being as proactive as we can in ensuring the integrity of the game is maintained.''
At the moment the ICC can only record the number of approaches reported to them by players, but in order to get a firmer grasp of the scale of corruption in the game they need a sense of how many approaches go unreported.
The feeling within the game's governing body is that if players were aware that a suspicious approach could be from an undercover agent, they would be more likely to report it. If the plan is approved at the ICC's next meeting, it could come into being as soon as next month's Ashes and be in place for the World Cup in February.
