IT has been a dream week for Salim Malik. One day the former Pakistan captain was gearing for the biggest battle of his life as the media portrayed him as the one player most likely to be found guilty by the Justice Qayyum Judicial Commission probing match-fixing charges against him. The next day he was not only back in the team playing his 100th Test, but also proclaiming his innocence, calling Waugh and Warne "liars" and threatening legal action against them.
And why not? Four years after he was named by the Aussies of having approached them to play below par—which prompted the Pakistan Cricket Board to pursue match-fixing charges against the former captain—he had at last got a chance to hit back at his nemeses. "When they can take money from a bookie, they can do anything for money and how can one believe them now? They also lied before the Commission, but the truth has now come out and I am a relieved man," declared Malik.
The PCB chairman, Khalid Mehmood, always seen as a "protector", also went to town, expressing disbelief that the ACB and ICC had displayed double standards while supporting and welcoming a judicial inquiry against Pakistani cricketers, while covering up for Waugh and Warne. Mehmood's contention is that Waugh, who testified before the Commission in October in Lahore repeating his charges against Malik, had not come to the table with clean hands and had committed perjury and the ACB had also let down Pakistan by not disclosing the internal action they took against Warne and Waugh in '95.
Mehmood was not alone in feeling this way. Justice Malik Muhammad Qayyum, who throughout the inquiry had made it clear that he was dead serious about getting to the bottom of the match-fixing and betting allegations, is also said to have been deeply disappointed with the failure of the Australians to come clean. The Justice was said to be all the more upset since ACB official Malcolm Speed had accompanied Mark Taylor and Waugh to the special hearing and yet kept mum. But Qayyum has made it clear that he is made of sterner stuff. "If Mark Waugh has admitted taking money, it does not mean Malik is innocent," he said. Peter Roebuck, writing in Australia's The Age, echoed his views: "The idea that Salim Malik and his cohorts are in the clear because these Australians were foolish is absurd. Fixing matches is incomparably worse than taking money for passing on routine information."
PCB's legal advisor Ali Sibtain Fazli says the Commission has other evidence against Malik. Fazli says Saleem Parvez, a former international cricketer, and some other bookies have passed on vital information regarding payments made to Malik and other players during the Singer Cup—the same tournament in which Waugh and Warne also took money.
"The inquiry is not dead," says Fazli. If the Australian cover-up has caused problems for Justice Qayyum, it has only confirmed the suspicion that match-fixing goes far beyond Pakistan cricket.
