By SUNIL Sonkar
London, August 30 — After the Saturday’s match-fixing story by News Of The World, it was further revealed that Bookie Mazhar Majeed took an advance of £10,000 from the newspaper to make Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer bowl illegal balls.
The two bowlers were caught on candid camera while taking the remaining money. The recording of it was later handed over to police.
News Of The World’s undercover team posed as Far East gambling cartel’s front men.
The bookie said, “I’m going to give you three no-balls to prove to you firstly that this is what’s happening. They’ve all been organized, okay?”
He told to the group pretending to be a syndicate that they could make too much of money by paying him for information on the matches and then to place bets. However, Majeed defended the players’ disgraceful. He said, “These poor boys need to. They’re paid peanuts.”
He said at the first meeting with NOTW, “I manage 10 of the (Pakistani) players. I do all their affairs like contracts, sponsorship, marketing, everything.” Then, rather embarrassingly for Pakistani authorities, he said, “I work very closely with the PCB ( Pakistan Cricket Board).” Saeed revealed: “When we started this tour, I told the players they shouldn’t be entertaining these two (Majeed and his brother Azhar Majeed) in their hotel rooms.”
Managing editor of NOTW Bill Akass said this scandal could be “the tip of the iceberg.”
He added further, “He (Majeed) spoke of recent Tests in Australia and that they had been thrown and $1.3 m had been made as a profit from them. He also spoke about forthcoming matches they were planning to lose.”
