France Cricket is presently confronted with substantial accusations of fraud and corruption, which may lead to an inquiry from the International Cricket Council (ICC). The International Cricket Council (ICC) issued the following statement in response to a French media report that claimed France Cricket had substantially inflated allegations regarding the conduct of matches: “We are investigating.” Indeed, according to the report, France Cricket has been implicated in the fabrication of matches and has provided the ICC with falsified reports.
“Instead of the scheduled women’s match, the men’s under-19 semi-final – which should have ended far earlier – was taking place. Once the game ended, around 3:30pm, both teams packed up and left. The women’s second division game apparently did not follow. Three days later, France Cricket rubber-stamped the match as having taken place and posted the results on their website,” France 24 said in a detailed report under the sub-head of Phantom matches. The report further said that the clubs’ fake scoresheets.
“Most clubs cheat, they pretend to have a women’s team. They pay for licenses and then they fake score sheets online. We have refused to fake matches and that means that even if we qualify, we’re likely to never be able to get a promotion.” the coach of a club has been quoted in the report as saying.
While the ICC has been in contact with France Cricket and is gathering information, France Cricket dismissed the report as baseless:
“These are absolutely fake and baseless allegations from a British-origin journalist trying to get some attention, especially with myself being of Indian origin and at the helm for the past 10 years, they haven’t been any part of the system for a while for cricket in France.
“As Cricket recently has been included in the Olympics, if you try and understand, the timing couldn’t be better. Now, they are just trying to get some traction. We have already been in touch with ICC and our Lawyer is taking all the required measures,” Prebou Balane, the president of France Cricket, told CricAdvisor on November 9.
