Anti-corruption measures should be adopted for a corruption free cricket, says Rahul Dravid

Anti-corruption measures should be adopted for a corruption free cricket, says Rahul Dravid: Former India captain and Rajasthan Royals mentor Rahul Dravid on Monday said that anti-corruption measures must be adopted at all international and domestic tournaments, for corruption-free cricket. He also talked about the need for getting corruption-related offences in the field of criminal laws as another step to rid the threat.

“We have to remember that the IPL is a two-month tournament. Nine-ten months of the year, people are not with the franchises. Sometimes they are with their state teams or international teams and that is a long time of the year,” Dravid said. “Things like education and vigilance need to be followed not only by the IPL but by everyone else.”

In 2013 Three Rajasthan Royals players, including India pace bowler S Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila were arrested for spot-fixing. When asked about the measures need to be taken by the officials to deal with this type of issues, Dravid said, “There have been some unfortunate incidents relating to IPL. But there have been such incidents in cricket as a whole and IPL cannot be seen in isolation. IPL attracts a lot of hype, media attention and wrong elements as well. We have to be vigilant at all times.

“We have the system, the education program and everyone is making an effort. We have to recognize that there are undesirable elements who want to come into the game. New players coming into the IPL need to be guided.”

The Rajasthan Royals mentor also called for stricter laws, even criminal, to be put in place by the country’s lawmakers to deal with match fixing issues in IPL.”Irrespective of whoever is in charge of the IPL, one of the most important things is that we need to have stricter laws that deal with issues like match fixing, spot fixing. And there should be consequences when people make mistakes and are proven guilty,” he said.

“We need to have those laws in place that in the long term act as a deterrent. For anything like robbery, theft and cheating there are laws and strict consequences. Those consequences need to happen from lawmakers. You need to go into areas of almost treating it as a criminal offence. That’s my belief. There are consequences in cricket and you pay the price.”