Damning report stuns cricket world

The report was made public in New Delhi

A report into cricket corruption has thrown the sport into turmoil by naming several leading players from the major Test-playing nations.

Former England captain Alec Stewart and West Indian batsman Brian Lara are mentioned in the written submission, along with ex-Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin and team-mates Manoj Prabhakar, Ajay Jadeja, Nayan Mongia and Ajay Sharma.

Hansie Cronje, already a high-profile casualty of the scandal, is also named as are Australians Mark Waugh and Dean Jones, Sri Lanka's Aravinda de Silva and Arjuna Ranatunga, New Zealand's Martin Crowe and Pakistan's Salim Malik.

The most damning indictment is of Azharuddin, who the report says confessed to fixing games with the help of colleagues.

While there is no suggestion that either Stewart or Lara were involved in match-fixing, the report does contain allegations from bookmaker Mukesh Kumar Gupta that he paid Stewart £5,000 for information on pitch, weather conditions and team morale on England's tour of Inida in Sri Lanka in 1993.

Gupta also claims he paid Lara US$40,000 to underperform to in two one-dayers during the West Indies tour of India in 1994.

Stewart denial

In response, Stewart has strenuously denied receiving money and also insisted he never knowingly met Gupta.

A statement from the England and Wales Cricket Board, which declared Stewart would remain with the team on the current tour of Pakistan, added: "Alec Stewart has fully co-operated with the ECB over this matter, and has categorically denied to Lord MacLaurin, chairman of the ECB, and Tim Lamb, chief executive, that he has ever taken money from Mr Gupta or anyone else, for providing information related to a cricket match."

The 162-page report by India's premier law enforcement agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, was made public by sports minister Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa on Wednesday.

Azharuddin: One of five Indian players named

Releasing the report to the world's media, Dhindsa said he hoped the guilty parties would be punished.

"The law ministry will decide if we can file charges against the Indian players. I am not certain what will happen about the foreign players."

Dhindsa added he had summoned the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to discuss the repercussions from the report.

The BCCI has promised to take stern action against the guilty players, possibly even erasing their records.

The romanticism associated with the game is perhaps gone for ever

  India's Central Bureau of Investigation

The report itself meanwhile concluded: "The romanticism associated with the game is perhaps gone for ever.

"Increasingly, in the playing fields around the world, the music of a sweetly timed stroke is being replaced by the harsh cacophony of ringing cellphones."

The CBI investigation began in May, a month after Hansie Cronje was sacked as South African captain after admitting that he received money from bookmakers in exchange for porviding them with match information.

Kapil Dev: Insists he has done nothing wrong

They subsequently charged Cronje and team-mates Nicky Boje, Pieter Strydom and Herschele Gibbs with "cheating, fraud and ciriminal conspiracy" in connection with a one-day series against India earlier this year.

Detectives interviewed numerous Indian players and officials, past and present, together with alleged bookmakers.

But they have found no evidence against Kapil Dev, who resigned last month as India's coach after denying match-fixing allegations by Prabhakar.