Ponting admits error in keeping bookie offer secret (17 November 1998)

17 December 1998

Ponting admits error in keeping bookie offer secret

AFP

MELBOURNE, Dec 17 (AFP) - Australian Test cricketer Ricky Ponting admitted Thursday he made an error in not telling the Australian Cricket Board sooner about being offered money by a bookmaker in Sydney last year.

The bookmaker approached Ponting at a greyhound meeting and offered him a four-figure sum for information about team selections and pitch conditions.

Unlike teammates Mark Waugh and Shane Warne, who took 6,000 dollars (3,600 US) and 5,000 dollars (3,000 US) respectively from an Indian bookmaker to provide similar information during the Sri Lankan tour of 1994, Ponting turned down the offer.

"Maybe I did (make a mistake)," he said of the time it took him to inform the ACB.

"He (the bookmaker) spoke to me for a moment or two about how I and the team were going and then said he wanted to make contact with me in the future," Ponting said.

"He said he would like to know in advance about the line-up of the Australian team for each match and what information he could get about the pitch conditions for each game and in return for that information he said he would pay me a four-figure amount. "I told him I wasn't interested in any way and that I would not co-operate and I have not had any further contact with the person concerned."

Ponting said he did not know the name of the bookmaker, but would probably recognise him if he saw him again.

He said he would provide as much information about him as possible to the ACB inquiry into player conduct which will begin next week and run until the end of February.

Ponting said he told his manager, Sam Halverson, about the approach and then decided to let the matter rest, believing it was not a serious issue.

"Maybe I should have gone straight to the ACB, but I went straight to my manager and we sorted it out between us and that was it," he said.

Ponting admitted that he should have told the ACB of the approach immediately rather than waiting until last Tuesday's team meeting, where players were asked if they had been approached in light of the Waugh and Warne scandal. "I didn't think too much of it at the time and I haven't thought too much

about it since, until it came up last week," he said. Two other former Test players, Australian Greg Matthews and New Zealander Danny Morrison, have also said they were approached by bookmakers.

The ACB, which covered up the Waugh and Warne scandal for four years, was informed of the approach to Ponting the day before the pair apologised for their actions at a news conference.

But it did not reveal the approach to Ponting, despite chief executive Mal Speed being repeatedly asked if other players had been contacted by bookmakers.

Ponting said this was done to enable him to concentrate on his performance in the third Test against England just concluded in Adelaide.

But it did not help the Tasmanian, who made just 10 and five, giving him only 47 runs in his last four Test innings.

He is now in danger of losing his place to South Australian skipper Darren Lehmann for the Boxing Day Ashes Test in Melbourne, but denied that the drop in his form and the fact the bookmaker approach was about to be revealed were linked.

"It wasn't playing on my mind when I was at the crease," he said. "It (his dismissals) was just a basic concentration thing, it wasn't because this thing was playing on my mind."