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DON TOPLEY INTERVIEW: Exposing spot fixing will get harder unless whistleblowers get support and don’t fear speaking out

Cricket’s first whistleblower Don Topley warns exposing the ongoing spot fixing crisis could get harder unless more support is given to those who speak out.

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Cricket’s first whistleblower, Don Topley, has warned the sport is in danger of allowing history to repeat itself with the spot-fixing crisis if players continue to fear the ramifications of revealing the truth.

Former Essex bowler Topley, whose son Reece now plays for England, was vilified in 1994 for alleging counties were fixing results in league games to benefit their respective causes.

Nothing was proven, but those claims have been supported by many, including as recently as 2011, by Sir Paul Condon, the former head of the ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit.

Now the chief executive of the Professional Cricketers’ Association, Angus Porter, has warned in newspaper interviews that the recent acquittal for perjury of Chris Cairns could put players off coming forward with evidence of spot fixing, especially after the tough cross examinations of high profile stars Brendon McCullum and Daniel Vettori.

And, given his own experience, Topley says he fully agrees: “I do fear that whistleblowers will be more reluctant to come out. That’s sad because it’s the only way to find the truth and of course there will be many people with agendas not wanting it to come out.

“But I hope today’s cricket can learn from the mistakes made. Initially people didn’t take my allegations seriously enough.

“People in those ivory towers, for whatever reason, didn’t take them seriously. Match fixing in its various guises has evolved from the convenient bartering aspect, the most basic form of match fixing that I highlighted, to the more intricate form that we see today of spread betting and spot fixing.

“Sadly, I think, because people didn’t take notice or take a stance, match fixing has been allowed to become a different animal.”

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Topley, 51, was born in Canterbury and spent a season trialling with Surrey before moving to Essex where he would go on to spend the rest of his career.

In November 1994, while teaching at Royal Hospital School following his recent retirement from the game, he was called by a journalist with questions about the nature of two matches at Old Trafford that he played in.

Those fixtures in 1991, Topley alleged, saw Lancashire allowed to win the Sunday League match and Essex the Championship game that, in those days, was played around the limited-over fixture.

“Maybe I’ve had a small part in changing things,” he said, “But the immediate thing that I changed was that the following season one-day games were taken out from between the sandwich of the longer game played around them.

“There weren’t any systems in place for anything of this sort (corruption). There weren’t private hotlines and, of course, they were shock allegations, which had everyone in the UK thinking I was telling untruths.

“The reality was these things were going on, not every year, but it was being brought to my attention as well from other pros, who were saying: ‘ok, add this game, add this game’ and there was enough evidence that warranted investigation.

“But the dangers of these scenarios is when you do investigate you often come across people that sit on the top table. There were lots of poachers that turned gamekeepers and that’s still part of the problem in the media and administration today.

“There are plenty of people that don’t want to know the truth. They would rather not look back at what’s gone on and instead just try and ensure it doesn’t happen again.

“Now that may help the game in terms of damage limitation but in terms of my case I felt that, not only would we revisit the record books, we’d possibly rewrite them because teams were going on to win leagues as a result.

“I was definitely the first person to suggest there was skullduggery going on in the professional game but little did we know that within months and years there would be allegations against Hansie Cronje, Mohammad Azharuddin and Salim Malik, who I knew very well and he played in the games that I alleged were fixed.

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“England players were invited to be questioned by Lord MacLaurin (the then the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board) and there were some difficult and dark days but all of those other international allegations just acted as credibility to what I had said.”

Topley recalls all too well the ramifications that the allegations had for him and his young family and with his professional career only recently at an end, having not been offered a new contract at Essex, he says that was an easy way for people to label him as nothing more than “bitter”.

“I wasn’t going to start lying, I had nothing to hide,” he said. “Yes, I played in it, yes, I had to underperform. I not proud of what went on but it was difficult to oppose it.

“It was difficult for the family at the time. When I look back it may have cost me a few jobs and emotionally it all got to me in the end. I was definitely hurt by the establishment.

“But I sleep very, very well at night, knowing what I know, and I stand by everything that I’ve ever said.

“If I’d have told lies years ago, which is how I was labelled, that I was bitter and twisted, there’s no way I’d be able to hold my head up high, go around cricket now supporting my son as I have done.

“I always walk into places where some are clearly uneasy and awkward but there in the same room will be many, many more who embrace me.

“Now there are those in cricket that think the game has let me down and they are just so over the moon about the success of Reece and that is systematic of what I go through day to day. They’re pleased for me because some feel that cricket served me a little disservice.

“I love the game of cricket but back then it was very hard for the family because I was vilified in many quarters as a defence mechanism but later I was vindicated and certainly to a degree by Lord Condon, as well.

“I’m very proud of my own career, I was never good enough for England, but Essex were a very good club in the 80s and I’m very proud of my time coaching Zimbabwe and of the honesty and transparency that I’ve been involved in with the match fixing allegations.

“And now having a profiled cricketer in Reece come on the scene, it’s a pleasure to go and support him as I still contribute to his cricket.”

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And Topley adds that he’s relieved for his son that the England and Wales Cricket Board and the PCA are proactive in their education of young players to the darker side of sport.

“It’s much more challenging to fix matches in England today but we can’t say what’s going on around the rest of the world,” he added.

“From Reece’s angle, and of course he’s had a certain degree of education from being at home with us and knows everything that’s ever gone on with regards myself, he understands scenarios a little bit better than others do.

“We need the same commitment across the world though because proving what these match fixers have done is difficult and they’ll know they can probably get away with it again. That is. the sad reality.”