Stricter laws needed to deal with spot-fixing: Dravid

Having gone through a testing time as cricket captain of Rajasthan Royals when the spot-fixing scandal broke two seasons ago, team mentor Rahul Dravid today called for stricter laws, even criminal, to be put in place by the country's lawmakers to deal with this issue in IPL.
"Irrespective of whoever is in charge of IPL, one of the most important things is that we need to have stricter laws that deal with issues like match fixing, spot fixing. And there should be consequences when people make mistakes and are proven guilty," said the former India captain at a media conference, here.

"We need to have those laws in place that in the long term act as a deterrent. For anything like robbery, theft and cheating there are laws and strict consequences (for breaking them). Those consequences need to happen from lawmakers. You need to go into areas of (these things) almost to be treated as a criminal offence. That's my belief," said Dravid.
"There are consequences in cricket (for wrong doing) and you pay the price," pointed out Dravid with Royals players Shane Watson (captain), Steve Smith, James Faulkner, all Australians, and India's Ajinkya Rahane sitting by his side.
Three Royals players, including India pace bowler S Sreesanth, were found guilty of spot fixing and sentenced to prison in 2013.

The far-reaching effect of the scandal saw the then Cricket Board president and Chennai Super Kings team owner N Srinivasan being asked to step aside from his role by the Supreme Court after his son-in-law and team principal Gurunath Meiyappan was found guilty of betting during the cash-rich league.