‘This is too hot to sit on’: The inside story of Pakistan’s match fixing scandal

Many of the best stories come out of hotels, their bars being such seductive places, the atmosphere hospitable and inviting, stimulating conversation, oiling tongues and opening wallets. Often it yields a good story, the gossip fascinating, a safe place for scandalous defamations, always bringing a warmth to occupy a long evening.

There are multitudes of false stories and, sometimes of course, great stories, just a whisper maybe, a rumour, a suspicion. And then, lying there, nestling in black velvet, is a diamond, a beautiful truth.

My story came via a telephone call in the week of the Australian cricket team’s departure for New Zealand soon after the tour of Pakistan in 1994-95. It was the phone call a journalist had to have, just when I did not need it. I knew the voice immediately, the country twang from the frosty side of Canobolas.

“You packed?”

“No, the usual story: pack the night before we leave and forget half of what I need.”

“Mate, this has to break. It’s too hot to sit on. All the fellas are talking about it. Meet me for lunch at the pub at the Rocks?”

“Of course.”

“Midday?”

“Sounds good.”

“It’s good all right.”

Weeks before I had missed the tour of Pakistan, a country I had enjoyed on two previous occasions, and subsequently a country to which the Australian Cricket Board rarely despatched a team for security reasons. But it remained a tour I always wished to make again, if only to renew acquaintances with players whom I remained on the best of terms: Salim Malik, Intikhab Alam, Javed Miandad, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Saeed Anwar and Mushtaq Mohammad, younger brother of the prolific Hanif and from the remarkable family of four international brothers.

The curse of the newspaper group coverage was striking more and more frequently, the heavy financial factor ending the newspapers’ practice of sending separate journalists on tour, where Sydney and Melbourne papers of the Fairfax conglomerate pooled their resources, halving the cost and sharing the coverage by sending one journalist instead of despatching each paper’s cricket specialist.

Pakistan was not for everyone, but a prized destination for me, invariably challenging, hot and dusty, a climate to ravage laptop computers but a land of welcoming, generous people, of fierce rivals, and a nation of champion cricketers and good men.

Phil Wilkins filing Test copy in 1989.Credit: Alamy

I did not need an hour of liquor to prise the story from my caller, just an attentive ear, something in return for favours rendered to a hot-blooded, young cricketer from the bush; an occasional home-cooked meal for a big, starving kid who came to Sydney to win a baggy green cap. He never made it into the Test team, so he did the next best thing and became a cricket official. In a roundabout way, Brutus came straight to the subject.

“You should have come,” he lectured. “You should have been there.”

“Don’t tell me that, mate. I wanted to be there.”

He shook his head as if in bad company. “You won’t believe it. No one’s written it yet.”

“Try me.”

He elaborated warily; a Pakistani had approached two of the Australian players, an international, he said, informing them they could earn some money, big money, if they were prepared to do what they were told – “one of their Test players!”

“Someone I know?”

“He spoke to Warnie and Maysie. You know him all right.”

“Well, who?”

“Salim Malik.”

“Salim? Never!”

It was preposterous, so outrageous it must have been his idea of a joke. Salim was not simply a Test player, but no less the captain of Pakistan’s Test team. But friendly, good-natured Salim, a friend of a back-alley bookmaker? Impossible.

Pakistan Test cricketer Salim Malik. Credit: AP

I knew him well. We had met on many occasions, generally in the nets at practice. He was a pleasant, personable man, slim and agile, the most gifted of batsmen. Even as a young international on his initial tour, he was always the most approachable of players, encouragingly talkative, unusually so, for Pakistan’s tyro players were invariably conservative, withdrawn individuals, taught to be reserved and to know their place in the society of international cricket.

Salim was almost unique, not one to be constrained by Muslim convention. Later, on reflection, I realised Australian cricketers had always regarded him with a curious, unelaborated suspicion. When they spoke of him, it was often with a sneer and a reference to “the Rat”.

The first player tracked down later that afternoon was Shane Warne, always the most buoyant, loquacious of personalities. Unusually, Shane immediately went on the defensive, loath to speak on the subject, preferring that I speak to his manager, Austin Robertson, the retired Australian Rules goal-kicker of consequence in Perth, a personality involved in the formation of the World Series Cricket organisation.

Robertson appeared taken aback when informed of the bribery bid, declaring he would discuss the matter with Warne and ring back that evening. Always the dependable one, he never did. Just as when manager of the WSC team in the West Indies in 1979, he failed to pass on the relatively important news of Australian captain Ian Chappell being charged by the Guyanese police and thus required to appear in court for the incident involving Inshan Ali, when Chappell jostled the West Indian official on “Black Sunday”.

Appropriately for a top-class spinner, Tim May, Warne’s slow bowling partner, always seemed to have a card up his sleeve. An intelligent, quietly assured man, he employed his business acumen when his playing career ended to become an advocate for Australia’s first-class cricketers in negotiations with the Australian Cricket Board, ultimately at the highest level, contributing to drawing up a charter of rights and conditions for the players.

Mark Waugh and Shane Warne speak to the media during an inquiry into the Pakistani bribery allegations in 1999. Credit: Vince Caligiuri

When Australia’s professional cricketers formed a union, May was the driving force seeking financial incentives and entitlements, becoming their first executive officer. On this occasion, however, my question about Malik and the bribe drew an audible gasp from Adelaide, “It’s too big!” The conversation soon ended.

The fourth phone call was again to Adelaide and to the Australian team manager in Pakistan, Colin Egar, the famed umpire in Australia’s tied Test with the West Indies in Brisbane in 1960-61 and national team manager on subsequent Australian tours. Always the precise, astute thinker, Egar was a man who emanated trustworthiness. Without hesitation, he confirmed that the bribery offer was made, his only surprise registered when questioned about the reported figure of $225,000 per informant, remarking casually, “I thought it was more than that.”

Simultaneously, I was delighted and dismayed by events. While Egar was initially forthcoming with his information, he was reticent about being quoted or elaborating on when and where the discussions occurred, remaining vague in detail. As it proved in the following 24 hours of discreet phoning and questioning other contacts, the difficulty in having major contacts confirm the truth of the accusation was that none of them wished to be quoted and they were even more reluctant to become involved in any court case which might eventuate and require them to provide evidence against Malik. Legally, the story was on a sticky wicket. The consolation was that the revelation at the Rocks was confirmed, the bribery inducement verified.

John Fairfax’s legal authority had a picnic. Two days later when the story hit the streets, the article splashed across the top of The Sydney Morning Herald’s front page, it ran without mention of a name, without the would-be rogue’s identity, and certainly not that he was captain of Pakistan’s Test team. To highlight the culprit with the bland wording, “a prominent Pakistani cricket identity”, reduced an international infamy to a tantalising mystery.

With the story running prominently on the international wires and the Pakistani team then in Sri Lanka, time was running out before the Australian team’s departure for New Zealand. Phone calls to Pakistan revealed the hotel and whereabouts of their cricket team. Upon request, I was transferred to Salim Malik’s room. A male answered the phone without revealing his identity, refusing to confirm himself as Salim, maintaining a prolonged silence while I identified myself as the journalist responsible for the incriminating article.

This is an extract from Hell for Leather – The World of a Sporting Journalist by Phil Wilkins, published in 2023 by Fair Play Publishing. Available at all good bookstores and online.

Read Part 2 on Sunday.