Stewart made to wait to clear name

Martyn Ziegler
Saturday 23 June 2001 00:00 BST
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The England captain, Alec Stewart, will have to wait until 1 July before being officially cleared of corruption charges.

Investigators will not give up hope until then that the Indian bookmaker Mukesh Gupta will give evidence to the inquiry, despite his refusal to speak to two members of the inquiry team earlier this week.

Stewart and several other top international cricketers will be found innocent of corruption charges if Gupta maintains his silence. Two members of the International Cricket Council's anti-corruption unit visited Gupta's home in New Delhi yesterday but failed to persuade him to give evidence. Some reports say the investigators met Gupta and that he was unwilling to testify, while others say the bookmaker was away from home. Either way, the ICC has has confirmed that the investigators, Geoff Rees and Alan Hawkins, have returned to England.

An ICC spokesman added: "The anti-corruption unit will not make any other comment on the Gupta situation until after 1 July." That date is the deadline set by the ICC's chief investigator, Sir Paul Condon, for Gupta to come forward, otherwise he will drop the inquiry against Stewart and other cricketers.

Condon and his team have already spoken to Gupta at two meetings earlier this year. Stewart, currently the England captain with Nasser Hussain absent injured, is now likely to be declared innocent by the England and Wales Cricket Board before the Ashes series gets under way on 5 July. Other cricketers likely to now be cleared include Brian Lara, Mark Waugh, Martin Crowe, Arjuna Ranatunga and Aravinda de Silva.

A report into match-fixing by India's Central Bureau of Investigation quotes Gupta as saying he paid £5,000 to Stewart during England's 1992-93 tour to provide information about the wicket and team composition, a charge the England player has always strenuously denied.

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