I WAS sitting on my bed watching television in my room at the Pearl Intercontinental Hotel in Rawalpindi when the phone rang. It was October 31, 2000, and that call marked the beginning of a process that saw my name dragged into the mire of cricket corruption. It would be eight months before I was cleared — an agonising period during which innuendos swarmed around me, everything I stood for in the game was questioned and my family was put under the sort of pressure we had only read about.
I thought the phone call was from one of the lads organising a night out — a rare thing during that Pakistan tour. But on the line was a female producer from the Indian satellite television station, Star Sports. She said that I had been named in a report that was due to be published stating that I had been accused of taking money from an Indian bookmaker. Did I have any comment to make?
I had no idea what she was talking about, told her so in a polite manner and hung up. I was baffled, but I didn’t really think anything more about it. I knew that India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was due to publish its report into corruption in the sport because it was all over the local papers. Cricketers are no different from any group of people — we like a gossip — and we had been wondering who would be named. It was common knowledge that betting on cricket was all the rage on the sub-continent and that many bookies were involved, but it did not occur to us that an England player would be mixed up in it. Least of all me.
I realised that I ought to tell the management. I had a word with Phil Neale (the operations manager) and Andrew Walpole, our media relations manager. Andrew told me to refer all further calls to him. One of our travelling English reporters, Richard Hobson, of The Times, had phoned me to tell me what was being said about me in the CBI report. Richard said that an Indian bookie, M. K. Gupte, had alleged that I had taken £5,000 from him during our tour to India in 1993, in exchange for information about our likely Test team, the state of our morale and my opinion of how the pitch was likely to play.
I had apparently drawn the line at trying to fix a match. I thanked Richard for his help and reiterated that there was nothing in all of this. I thought it best, though, to tell my family what was going on, in case anyone hassled them back home. Lynn (my wife) was perfectly calm about it all, but my parents were far from happy. As someone who had been involved in professional sport for almost all his life, Dad (Micky) was furious that the Stewart name was being dragged into wild allegations from a bookmaker in India.
I reassured Mum and Dad that nothing would come of any of it and that it would be forgotten after a couple of days. I was still unaware, as I went to bed that night, that so many in the media were getting excited. I was about to experience one of the worst weeks of my life.
Our next match, against the Patron’s XI, was starting the following day, but I was due a rest and was not going to the ground. That morning, however, I had another call from the Indian media that was disturbing. It was a newspaper reporter and he was abrupt and rude. He began by saying: “I suppose you don’t want to talk about it now you’ve taken the money.” I couldn’t believe his attitude and told him to speak to Andrew Walpole, wondering if there were going to be any more such calls. I went to see Andrew and he advised me to put a bar on calls to my room because this was building into a big story.
IN 2000, cricket corruption was a hot topic and reporters were sniffing around for all sorts of connections. Since April, Hansie Cronje’s reputation had been destroyed by his admission of various offences that were astonishing to all of us who had played against him and now it was open season.
The bookie making allegations against me was the one who drew Cronje in for several years and his influence had spread. Mohammad Azharuddin, the former India captain, eventually admitted being involved in fixing one-day internationals and he, too, was banned for life. Gupte had fingered him to the Indian police and CBI. He also got involved with Salim Malik, the Pakistan batsman, and Ajay Jadeja, Ajay Sharma and Manoj Prabhakar, the India players. According to the CBI report, Prabhakar had introduced me to Gupte in India during that 1993 tour and it was then that I took the money.
I barely knew Prabhakar to talk to, so I would have remembered a rare conversation with him that had led to an introduction to a bookmaker. As for meeting Gupte, it might have happened, but not in the context of his allegations. The England party would have gone to various official functions and I am always happy to talk about cricket to anyone who is polite and interested and certainly I would have mentioned how we were coping on the tour and the topics of players and pitch conditions would no doubt have cropped up. So I might have met Gupte fleetingly on that tour because you have hundreds of brief conversations with local cricket fanatics. I certainly did not recall meeting someone who said he was a bookmaker. More to the point, I think I might have remembered someone handing me £5,000.
When Andrew Walpole returned from the ground, he told me that he had organised a conference call with the ECB at Lord’s. He had seen the press cuttings from home and the newspapers there were going big on the story. On the line from Rawalpindi to London, we talked to Tim Lamb, Lord MacLaurin of Knebworth, the chairman of the ECB, and David Graveney, the chairman of selectors and also the head of our players’ union. Janet Fisher, the ECB administration manager, took notes.
Lord MacLaurin asked me whether I had met Gupte, whether I had taken money from him or anyone else and whether I could shed any light on the allegations. I was able to answer “no” to everything, but I could understand why they were concerned.
When I called home, though, it sounded as if my family were having a nightmare. My son, Andrew, had been snapped by a press photographer going into school and Lynn was understandably upset by that. Did the press think Andrew’s father was a criminal? They were knocking on my door, putting pressure on Lynn, while my parents were getting the same treatment at their home. Dad was so angry at the slurs that he decided to go on the offensive and went on radio and television to denounce the way that we were being treated.
