London, Sept. 12: A Sunday Times report today said 29 players who had taken part in last year’s Indian Premier League games in South Africa were suspected of spot or match-fixing, but the International Cricket Council denied the charge.

The newspaper said the 29 names could be in a dossier prepared by the ICC’s anti-corruption and security unit. But a spokesperson for the world cricket body told The Telegraph: “We have no knowledge of such a dossier.”

The Sunday Times report, an exclusive, contained just 177 words and was published not on page one but in the newspaper’s sports section.

Headlined “29 more suspected of fixing by the ICC”, the report by Simon Wilde, the paper’s cricket correspondent, said: “The ICC’s anti-corruption and security unit has compiled a dossier believed to contain the names of 29 cricketers suspected of involvement in spot or match-fixing in last year’s Indian Premier League in South Africa.”

The report went on: “It is thought there are two Australians on a list that includes some high-profile names but nobody from England or Pakistan, whose players did not take part due to security issues.”

It added: “The dossier, which may never be widely circulated because the ICC has no jurisdiction over the IPL and so the investigation was an informal one, suggests corruption in the sport goes well beyond the Pakistan players accused of fixing during the current tour of England and the recent World Twenty20.”

The ICC spokesperson said: “The dossier cannot be made public because it doesn’t exist.”

Such a denial is hardly unexpected and does not refute the report’s contents. Still, most British journalists will feel that today’s Sunday Times report is a lot weaker than Mazher Mahmood’s original exclusive in the News of the World, which provoked the current rash of cricket corruption stories.

Also, the newspaper’s comment about the investigation being “informal” appears to sit uneasily with its claim about the ICC dossier.

The newspaper quoted an unidentified “source” as saying: “Some betting patterns were very suspicious at IPL2.”

The IPL was diverted to South Africa last year on security grounds because it coincided with the general election.

The News of the World today reported that Pakistan-born England Test cricketer Usman Afzaal was hiding in a “safe house” after a betting gang posing as cops ransacked his family home near Nottingham.

Afzaal’s brother Kamran had also received an anonymous call asking for £100,000, failing which his family would be reported to the ICC’s anti-corruption and security unit. The gang is said to be linked to an Indian “fixer” based in West Asia.

Afzaal, 33, featured in three Ashes Tests in 2001 and dated Bollywood actress Amrita Arora a few years ago.