BCCI to take action against former cricketer Robin Morris if found guilty by ICC

After the ‘Sandpapergate’ incident earlier this year which resulted in the Cricket Australia handing out long-term bans to Steven Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft due to their involvement in the ball-tampering saga, things became evident that the ICC would not tolerate any such behavior in the sport of cricket.

Recent revelations by Al Jazeera shed light on a pitch-fixing controversy which involved former first-class Indian cricketer Robin Morris. The 41-year-old one-time Ranji Trophy winner was caught on camera talking about how he has “about 30 players who will play what I tell them to” and also “make the pitch do whatever he wants”.

BCCI has come out to say that they will sit and monitor the situation around Morris for the moment till there is concrete evidence as to what exactly took place in Sri Lanka last year. The Test matches in question are India vs Sri Lanka (Galle, July 26-29, 2017), India vs Australia (Ranchi, March 16-20, 2017) and India vs England (Chennai, December 16-20, 2016).

"We believe ICC has started its probe. Let them complete that and pronounce Morris guilty. The BCCI will only act when they have the verdict in hand," a senior office-bearer of the Board told PTI today.

The same official further went on add that Morris, who has played 42 first-class and 51 list A matches over the course of his career as a cricketer is not involved in the affairs of the BCCI at any level whatsoever.

"We need to check with our Anti Corruption Unit (ACU) whether Morris' name was there on the suspect list. Secondly, he is not associated with any BCCI or state unit project currently from where we need to pull him out.

"So the only thing left is BCCI domestic cricketers' pension of Rs 22,500 (after deductions). If he is getting that pension, BCCI is well within its rights to cancel that but only after he has been proven guilty," the official added.

Morris, along with former Pakistan cricketer Hasan Raza, was caught on tape by media personnel bragging about their influence on the cricket pitch to Sri Lankan curator Tharanga Indika. However, Morris has come out to call foul and revealed that all this was just a conspiracy to frame him in something he was duped into by the media house in question. 

“It’s all for masala, let me see what they are going to show. I have done nothing wrong. They asked me whether I knew other cricketers because they wanted to conduct one tournament,” Morris told The Sunday Express.