Australian cricket has become entangled in one of the greatest humiliations in its history as outrage sounded over the involvement of two of their cricketing folk heroes, Shane Warne and Mark Waugh, in the international betting scandal.

After four years of secrecy, and persistent official denials, the Australian Cricket Board was yesterday forced to admit that Warne and Waugh had been fined for providing information to an Indian bookmaker during Australia's tour of Sri Lanka in 1994. Waugh was reportedly fined $10,000 and Warne $8,000. Malcolm Speed, the chief executive of the ACB, repeatedly stressed that Warne and Waugh were not embroiled in the corrupt match-rigging episodes that have formed cricket's greatest crisis of the modern age, and which have been the subject of a Pakistan judicial inquiry.

"There is no suggestion whatsoever of any match fixing," Speed said. Nevertheless, Warne and Waugh's allegations of attempted bribery have formed a central role in the bribery affair, which makes Australia's cover-up immensely damaging.

The bribes crisis took hold early in 1995 when Warne and Waugh, supported by the former Australian off-spinner Tim May, asserted that they had been offered bribes by the former Pakistan captain Salim Malik to throw matches during Australia's tour of that country the previous year.

What was never revealed was that Warne and Waugh had been secretly fined by the ACB around the same time after it became evident they had been paid by an Indian bookmaker on a previous tour of Sri Lanka for providing basic cricketing information: the weather forecast, team changes, state of the pitch and so on.