Waugh, whose twin brother Mark was interviewed by match-fixing investigators on Saturday, said the game had been battered and needed a clean-up.

Waugh said: "There's been a lot of things that have happened over the past few years and something positive is being done about it."

Waugh was speaking during a meeting in Melbourne of eight of cricket's 10 Test captains.

England captain Nasser Hussain and India's skipper Sourav Ganguly were not present.

The conference followed a series of meetings and briefings in Melbourne by top cricket officials, including ICC anti-corruption chief Sir Paul Condon.

Cricket corruption has been in the spotlight since April 2000 when former South African captain Hansie Cronje admitted receiving money from an illegal Indian bookmaker.

Players from a further eight nations have been accused of having accepted money in a scandal that has rocked the sport.

Former Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin and ex-Pakistan skipper Salim Malik have also received life bans.

Waugh said: "It's not going to be solved overnight.

"It's going to be a process that's going to take a while.

"But we've got fully professional people looking after what's going on and I'm sure that in the long run it's going to be better for the game.

"It's not really a matter of how long it takes, it's whether they can do the job fully ... they've got all intentions of doing that and they're on the right track."

Tarnished

Meanwhile the ICC said new allegations that four West Indian cricketers were involved in match-fixing were old and unsubstantiated.

Sir Paul Condon, head of the anti-corruption unit, said the cricket corruption allegations that emerged on the weekend in the British press did not relate to any matches in Australia this year.

Condon, who was in Australia for ICC meetings in Melbourne, said claims of a "stack of fresh allegations," published by the Observer newspaper of London, related to matches in the 1980s and the story unfairly tarnished the current West Indies tourists.

The report "contained no new information and is a repackaging of unsubstantiated allegations," Condon said in a statement.