1 International Cricket Council chairman Sir Clyde Walcott Monday called on the Australian Cricket Board to substantiate allegations that Australian players were offered bribes on last year's tour of Pakistan.
2 Sir Clyde, an outstanding batsman for the West Indies in the 1950s, said he believed the matter needed investigation but that more information was needed from the Australian authorities.
3 ACB chief executive Graham Halbish said Sunday that several Australian players had been approached during the October-November tour of Pakistan, but he refused to say which players were involved. Media reports named spin bowlers Shane Warne and Tim May.
4 Former Australian captain Allan Border, meanwhile, said he was offered a bribe to lose a Test match in England in 1993.
5 Border said Monday night that he was angry and stunned by the offer.
6 'It just left a bad taste in my mouth,' he told the Channel Nine news program.
7 'The right authorities know what's going on. Hopefully they'll put a rest to it.'
8 Responding to reports of the alleged offers to Warne and May, Sir Clyde, speaking from his home in Barbados, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: 'I think the allegations are extremely strong, and this is the first that the ICC has heard about them.
9 'I think that the matter now has to be investigated.
10 'We know no more than what we read in the press and the official statement by the ACB.'
11 Sir Clyde said how the ICC dealt with the allegations would depend on further information from the ACB.
12 'We cannot say anything until we get all the information,' he said.
13 Former ACB general manager David Richards now is chief executive of the ICC and has discussed the allegations with Halbish.
14 A report published Saturday in The Sydney Morning Herald detailed an attempt to bribe Warne and May before the first Test in Karachi.
15 The report said the bribe offer was rejected.
16 According to the newspaper report, Warne and May were offered U.S. dlrs 50,000 to throw the Test by bowling badly and allowing the Pakistan batsmen easy runs.
17 The approaches to them were said to have been made by a prominent person in Pakistani cricket, who was not identified in the report.
18 Pakistan won the match by one wicket.
19 Javed Burki, chairman of Pakistan's cricket committee, called the allegations 'absolutely fictitious and concocted.' He is expected to meet with ICC officials in London within the next week to discuss the matter.
20 Meanwhile, former Australian Test batsman Dean Jones has revealed he was offered U.S. dlrs 45,000 by an Indian bookmaker to furnish inside information on his team during the 1992-93 Australian tour of Sri Lanka.
21 Jones said he immediately rejected the offer and reported it to team officials.

International Cricket Council chairman Sir Clyde Walcott Monday called on the Australian Cricket Board to substantiate allegations that Australian players were offered bribes on last year ' s tour of Pakistan .
Australian players
What are their names?