Malcolm Gray reflects on cricket's darkest hour

International Cricket Council president Malcolm Gray made his comments a day before handing over the reins to his deputy, Ehsan Mani.

He told the Melbourne Age newspaper one of the disappointments of his time in charge was that the ICC had not been able to expose more people who were involved in corruption.

"It's probably understandable because we and the anti-corruption unit don't have any legislative power.

"We cannot march into somebody's house and carry out a search, we cannot arrest people, so we can only do it by investigation and persuasion," he was quoted as saying.

"The other reason is that there is a tendency to want to protect the sporting hero, and that's the fans, the public and I think some of the authorities tend to as well."

The sacking of Hansie Cronje as South African captain three years ago and his subsequent admissions that he accepted money from bookmakers sent a shock wave through the cricket world.

It led to a number of match-fixing inquiries in various parts of the cricket world and five players - Cronje, Pakistanis Salim Malik and Ata-ur-Rehman, and Mohammad Azharuddin and Ajay Sharma of India - received life bans from the game.

Rehman's ban was recently lifted, however, and Malik and Azharuddin continue to protest their innocence.

Cronje's life ended in tragedy when he died in a plane crash

It also prompted the ICC to establish its own Anti-Corruption Unit, headed by Lord Condon, the former commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police.

But despite its officers travelling all over the world to conduct investigations, the ACU never publicly named any individual as being involved in match-fixing.

Alec Stewart, Brian Lara, Martin Crowe, Arjuna Ranatunga were among those investigated after being named in a report produced by Indian police, but nothing was proved against them.

Lord Condon did, however, introduce a series of measures including the establishment of a full-time panel of security managers to monitor every international series.

Earlier this year, ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed warned other sports to be vigilant over corruption.

"We were surprised at how easy it was for the corrupters to tackle our sport. Cricket's officials were slow to act and the situation became worse," he commented.