Match fixing, record scores, and blocks of hashish the size of bricks

Mark Taylor walked past with a satisfied look on his face as a small group of Australian cricketers and a handful of motley cricket writers kicked a football on the Test ground in Peshawar.

“Where are you going?” I asked Taylor in the gathering gloom of another early twilight.

“To put a white line down the middle of that road,” Taylor replied in jest, referring to the pitch.

An hour earlier he had gone to stumps on the first day of the second Test in 1998 unbeaten on 112. After winning the first Test in Rawalpindi by an innings, this was one contented captain.

The following day Taylor strode to glory, going to stumps on 334 not out to equal Don Bradman’s highest score by an Australian.

Sadly, instead of eulogising Taylor’s history-making performance, I was sent to cover match-fixing hearings in the Lahore High Court by the hierarchy of The Australian newspaper, my employer at the time.

Mark Taylor on his way to equalling the record score of 334 not out in Pakistan, 1998.Credit: Getty

As Taylor was batting himself into folklore, I was shown a letter by a Pakistan Cricket Board legal adviser claiming Mark Waugh was involved with an illegal bookmaker.

“Do you know anything about this?” the legal adviser asked me.

“No!” I replied emphatically, believing it was an attempt to besmirch Waugh after he had given evidence to the match-fixing hearing earlier in the tour against former captain Saleem Malik.

Malik had been exposed by the Herald and The Age for offering Shane Warne and Tim May $US200,000 to bowl poorly on the last day of the 1994 Karachi Test, and Mark Waugh the same amount to perform poorly during a one-day international.

Former Pakistan captain Saleem Malik (centre), who was exposed for offering Shane Warne and Tim May $US200,000 to bowl poorly.Credit: Mark Ray

I attended the match-fixing hearings in Lahore several times. A procession of current and recent Pakistani players claimed they had heard rumours but knew nothing.

It appeared the local journalists were unusually close to the players as they filed in, until it became apparent they were autograph hunters in the middle of Pakistan’s most important court.

Justice Malik Mohammad Qayyum, an imposing figure in his flowing black robes, appeared as though he was sitting on a throne in this large and majestic colonial red-brick building dating back to the 1860s.

The hearings were in Urdu, with short English summaries every five minutes.

As Inzamam-ul-Haq, one of Pakistan’s leading batters, gave ever quieter replies in Urdu, Justice Qayyum erupted.

“What do you mean, who can’t remember swearing on the Koran!” he roared in English. “Take this man away and give me a good reason why I shouldn’t put him in jail!”

Inzamam’s story improved sufficiently the next day to avoid jail.

Following the Test series, Australia flew to Bangladesh for the first ICC Knockout, which has become the Champions Trophy, and immediately lost to India.

While the squad and media were booked to stay in Bangladesh for several days before a one-day series back in Pakistan, colleague Mark Ray from the Herald and I flew back to Pakistan, where we spent several days being driven along the old Silk Route by a hotel car and driver.

A butcher’s shop in Peshawar.Credit: Mark Ray

Ray, a keen photographer who took the pictures in this article, needed more film, so the driver took us to a little shop in Old Lahore. Tony Greig’s voice was booming from a television calling a match for the ICC Knockout and there were six men behind the counter, seemingly doing the accounts.

As we left the shop, our driver started laughing.

“What’s funny?” we asked.

“They’re bookmakers taking bets on the cricket,” he replied.

Returning to Peshawar, we stayed in a historic Sikh mansion converted into a guest house. Young manager, Bashir Khan, took us to some remarkable places in the volatile tribal areas along the Afghanistan border, which are now inaccessible to tourists.

A vast array of guns were made in local workshops in Darra.Credit: Mark Ray

In Darra, a notorious town about 40 kilometres south of Peshawar, some of the vast array of guns made in local workshops are cheaper than mobile phones and larger than some of the Japanese tourists paying to shoot them. Some of the hashish blocks on display in the shops dwarfed bricks.

Forms were completed by Bashir and a guard was required to travel up the Khyber Pass. His rifle seemed to be from the same colonial era as the collapsing railway tunnels; great feats of engineering through the rugged passage.

What at first appeared to be graves on a dry riverbed of rocks running alongside the winding road were actually sand cricket pitches. The headstones were wickets.

Malcolm Conn on tour in Pakistan in 1998.Credit: Mark Ray

Looking into Afghanistan from the top of the Khyber Pass, there was an endless line of overladen trucks and the occasional camel train making their way slowly up the other side of the pass as Kabul was ransacked following the first Taliban takeover.

A man stood on the bullbar of each truck with the radiator cap off, constantly pouring water into it. So slowly did they move, he had time to regularly run to the back of the truck for another full container on the way to Smugglers’ Bazaar near Peshawar.

There was no discussion about Afghanistan cricket in those days but its development was well under way. Millions of Afghan refugees poured into Pakistan following the Soviet invasion in 1979, and took cricket back with them a generation or two later.

Returning to Australia felt sterile. It also took a little readjusting. Arriving in Brisbane to cover the first Ashes Test of the summer, I rang reception to check if it was OK to drink the tap water.

After a gala launch of the Ashes, a number of players and officials were part of the late night crowd at Ian Healy’s Adrenalin nightclub.

I asked someone about the letter I had seen regarding Mark Waugh’s involvement with a bookmaker.

“That’s right,” came the reply. “He was selling information to bookmakers and got fined.”

Shocked, I grabbed a barman’s pen and some coasters, scribbled some notes on the back, and put them in my shirt pocket. When I woke later that morning I couldn’t read my writing but they reminded me of the conversation.

A month of phone calls later and, at the second attempt, the Australian Cricket Board admitted Mark Waugh and Shane Warne had been secretly fined in 1995 for selling information to illegal bookmakers about weather and pitch conditions. There was no evidence that either had been involved in match fixing.

And so unfolded the Mark Waugh, Shane Warne bookie scandal, which started with that letter the same day Taylor joined Bradman on 334 not out.

*Malcolm Conn won a Walkey Award for his coverage of the Mark Waugh, Shane Warne bookmaker scandal.

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