Aussies spurn ODIs, lose money

The Australian Cricket Board says it lost millions of dollars by declining offers to play in numerous one-day international tournaments since 1998.

ACB chief executive Malcolm Speed disclosed on Wednesday that this year itself the ACB had turned down lucrative offers to play in at least six tournaments.

Speed said the offers were declined to avoid overloading the national team. However, he also hinted that concerns caused by the emerging match-fixing scandals may have played a part.

"This year we could have accepted offers to play in six triangular one-day tournaments in different parts of the world ranging from the United States to Singapore, to Bermuda, right around the world," Speed told the National Press Club.

"We would have been paid a significant amount of money to play in each of those tournaments -- many, many hundreds of thousands for each tournament.

"We rejected all of those. The Australian team has not played in any of these ad hoc one-day international tournaments since we went to Sharjah at the end of an Indian tour in 1998, and we've turned our back as a result of that on millions of dollars.

"We believe that the current programme we have within Australia and within our regular programmes with overseas countries provides enough cricket for the players.

"And secondly, we don't want to play in these tournaments unless they're under the clear auspices of another cricket board against top-line competition.

"That's not to say some of these offers we've rejected (never) met those criteria."

Backing comments by Australian captain Steve Waugh, Speed said it would be tragic if the international match-fixing scandals overshadowed the Australian team's achievements.

"What we have is a team that is on the verge of breaking a record that may never be challenged again if we can get past the West Indies' record of 11 consecutive Test wins," he said.

Speed was asked if the ACB would be prepared to back a tough regime of audits to expose any Australian players who may have boosted bank accounts through match corruption.

"That's an issue that I'd certainly want to talk to the players about (first) and see whether they were comfortable and talk to the players' association," he said.

Turning to the ACB's recent demotion of Shane Warne from the vice-captaincy in favour of Adam Gilchrist, Speed said the ACB's directors had gone against the national selectors' recommendation for the overall good of the game.

"The selectors' brief is to look at what happens on the field, the directors' brief is to go wider than that and to look at other aspects of the game," he said.

"I think what we're talking about here is the directors taking the wider view of high standards of fair play and personal behaviour on and off the field."

Mail Cricket Editor