(Trinidad Express) West Indies leg-spinner Samuel Badree has been cleared of any spot or match-fixing allegations, one day after his name was disclosed by the Supreme Court in India as part of the Justice Mukul Mudgal committee report that probed allegations of betting and spot-fixing in the 2013 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Badree on Friday denied the claims outright.
And according to reports out of India, three cricketers (Badree among them) whose names were inadvertently taken by Justice TS Thakur in the 2013 IPL corruption case in the Supreme Court had been cleared by the Mudgal committee.
“It has been confirmed by a reliable source close to the case that the three cricketers were not party to any wrong doing and that their names had been emphatically cleared by the committee report,” the ESPN Cricinfo website reported yesterday
The story continued: “The names of three current cricketers were taken by Justice Thakur along with those of “non-playing” individuals whom the court went on to issue notice to in regard to findings in the report. There was no context or reference made regarding the reasons for naming the cricketers. Within a few minutes, the cricketers’ names appeared on Twitter and were picked up and flashed by most television news channels across India. The court then asked the media present to withhold the names and though the names were removed from screens in a short while, by then had already been in wide circulation. “
According to international and Indian media websites, the International Cricket Council chairman N Srinivasan, his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan, Rajasthan Royals co-owner Raj Kundra, IPL CEO Sundar Raman along with three cricketers Stuart Binny, Badree and Owais Shah were all named in the report submitted to the Supreme Court. Reports suggested that the names of the three players-three of six named in the report-were inadvertently released.
On Friday, Badree told the Daily Express: “I have no part in match-fixing or spot fixing and as a matter of fact, in that season I played one game with Rajasthan Royals and I am very confused about how my name was in that report, especially without even being told about it prior to reading it on the internet this morning. I am waiting for further information because I don’t even know what context my name was mentioned in. I am strongly against any kind of match-fixing or spot fixing.”
