IN the wake of match-fixing allegations that damaged the sport, tennis is setting up an independent body to review its anti-corruption program.

    “Sport is under the microscope more and more,” said Philip Brook, a top tennis official who spoke at a quickly arranged press conference at the Australian Open yesterday.

    “The integrity of sport in general is under the microscope,” he added, perhaps referring to a scandal that has engulfed FIFA, world soccer’s governing body.

    “We have to reassure everybody in our sport, watching our sport, that integrity is at the top of our pile of things to do.”

    A BuzzFeed News and BBC investigation published last week at the start of the year’s first major claimed that match fixing was rife in tennis and implicated a grand slam singles champion in a suspicious match. An online blog later named him as Lleyton Hewitt, with the Australian denying any wrongdoing.

    Then the New York Times reported that a bookmaker suspended bets on a mixed-doubles match at the Open involving Spaniards David Marrero and Lara Arruabarrena and Poland’s Lukasz Kubot and Andrea Hlavackova. Almost all of the money was placed on the Spanish team to lose and they did 6-0 6-3.

    Marrero and Arruabarrena said they did nothing wrong, with Marrero citing a knee injury to explain his performance. Kubot and Hlavackova confirmed that the Tennis Integrity Unit had spoken to them, without revealing more details.

    Yesterday, leading officials from governing bodies the ATP, WTA, ITF and grand slam board announced the formation of the independent body to be led by prominent British lawyer Adam Lewis. He will be assisted by two others.

    There’s no deadline to the review, results will be made public and the governing bodies “have committed to act on every recommendation,” said ATP chairman Chris Kermode, who was joined at the briefing by ITF president David Haggerty and Brook, the Tennis Integrity Board chairman and Wimbledon chairman. An interim report will be delivered, though no time-frame was given.

    Tennis isn’t the only sport to create such a body to look at the way it runs things. FIFA launched an Ethics Committee in 2012.

    Brook, though, said the independent body wouldn’t have been formed if the BuzzFeed and BBC investigation didn’t come out.

    The tennis review will, more specifically, examine the TIU, which was created in 2008. Questions have been raised about whether the TIU has enough funds and investigators.  (SD-Agencies)