John (bookmaker)
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John, also known as "John the bookmaker", is the name attributed an Indian bookmaker who offered money to Australian cricket team players Mark Waugh and Shane Warne in 1994-1995 in return for pitch and weather information from the two cricketers. This was one of the most publicised of a series of betting controversies in cricket in the 1990s and 2000s.
During the Singer World Series tournament in Sri Lanka in September 1994 involving India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Australia, Waugh was approached at the team hotel in Colombo by an Indian named "John", a bookmaker who asked him for general pitch and weather information as well as insider team information, in return for US$4000. Waugh accepted the money, with the arrangement in place until the end of the 1994/95 Australian summer, but he refused to divulge inside team information. Waugh also agreed to introduce "John" to Shane Warne, with the meeting occurring at a Colombo casino near the hotel. "John" introduced himself as a person who betted on cricket matches, and eventually Warne accepted a US$5000 gift, with "no strings attached", following Warne's gambling losses[1]. The two players kept in contact with him throughout the 1994-95 Australian summer, before ending the relationship [2].
[edit] Aftermath
During the Sri Lankan tour, Australian Cricket Board officials were told by journalists that there was speculation that Australian players had been having financial dealings with bookmakers. After a private investigation was opened, Waugh and Warne signed statements acknowledging their involvement, and were fined A$10000 and A$8000 respectively, with the report compiled by the ACB privately forwarded to the International Cricket Council. A subsequent report in 1998 by Rob O'Regan QC described the fines as "inadequate" and suggested that a "suspension for a significant time" was more appropriate[3]. He stated
| They must have known that it is wrong to accept money from, and supply information to, a bookmaker whom they also knew as someone who betted on cricket. Otherwise they would have reported the incident to team management long ago before they were found out in February 1995. In behaving as they did they failed lamentably to set the sort of example one might expect from senior players and role models for many young cricketers. |
In December 1998, prior to the Adelaide Test match against England, news broke that Waugh and Warne were involved with "John" four years earlier and that they were privately fined by ACB for it. Both were forced to make public statements acknowledging that they had been "naive and stupid" and reasserting that they had not been involved in corruption. The players were widely condemned by the media and public, with Prime Minister John Howard stating that he felt an "intense feeling of disappointment" and former player Neil Harvey calling for bans. Waugh himself was widely jeered by the crowd when he walked out to bat in the wake of the scandal, and made an unconvincing performance in what he described as the toughest day of his career [4]. After the release of the O'Regan report in February 1999, the ICC announced that no further action would be taken against Waugh and Warne as they could not be tried twice for the same offence [5].
