Who doesn’t love a fake? Hilarity and consternation this week, when Worcestershire’s oh-so-brief county cricket signing Adrian Shankar turned out as reliable as a sponge-cake submarine.
Yes, he was a cricketer, of sorts, but he’d played mostly second XI cricket for a few counties, and a smattering of first-class games for an average of 19.
Worcs picked him after he claimed to be 26 (making them eligible for ECB young-player funding), and to have had a prolific summer in a Sri Lankan Twenty20 tournament.
Unfortunately that meant he must have been 14 when he made his county debut, and 17 when he captained Cambridge. Equally unfortunately, his supposed opponents in Sri Lanka were actually playing elsewhere on the days he mentioned.
Shankar had in fact scored one first-class hundred, seven years ago, in a one-off match against an Oxford side that Shankar’s then coach described as “unbelievably bad”.
It’s not quite clear how Shankar thought he could mask his lack of talent after talking his way into a side. Or perhaps he had that undying faith that a sudden late-day flowering was about to take place. Either way, he has big hanging brass ones, and at least he’s not going to die wondering.
In tribute to his dodginess, in no particular order, here are some of the great sporting fake-outs – or at least, those that have been found out.
Fine Cotton, crap paint-job
Good money on this being both the most famous and the most poorly executed ring-in in Australian sport. The idea was sound: replace a very average horse in a restricted-entry race with a much better one, then back it to the hilt. But the crooks were denser than Borneo teak. First their Fine Cotton lookalike got injured, so instead of rescheduling, they bought a looknotsomuchalike in Bold Personality, and tried to change his colouring with hair dye. Because you’re worth it…
Then on race day, they forgot the bleach they were going to use to mimic Fine Cotton’s white socks, so they slapped a bit of white paint on instead.
Even without this Better Homes and Gardens approach, they would still have attracted attention for the huge plunge on their horse, with $1.5 million in 1984 dollars riding on a very minor race. But with the paint already running by the time he crossed the finish line (where his win by a short half head must have caused a few heart attacks), Bold Personality was pulled up by stewards before even reaching weigh-in.
The full extent of who was involved was never fully clear, but conspiracy theories abound. Recent claims suggest that Bold Personality may have graduated to standing in for Osama bin Laden.
The case of the vanishing bowler
Salman Butt’s exposal as a cheat last year should in fact have been no surprise after the most astounding scorecard in professional cricket. In 2009, Butt’s domestic one-day side National Bank needed a huge run-rate boost in their match against Lahore Eagles to qualify for the semi-finals.
Meaning they needed to dish out a thrashing.
Eagles captain Zulqarnain Haider – he who later fled the national team after death threats from match fixers – was demoted before the match. He says this came after he objected to personnel changes.
With Haider out of the way, in came a completely unknown seam bowler named Usman Sarwar. The Eagles crawled to 122 all out in 40 overs, with scores like 7 from 31 and 13 from 51.
Then the mysterious Sarwar opened the bowling, to see National Bank chase the target in 37 balls. That man Butt, not known as a dasher, scored 92 off 25. Sarwar gave up 78 from three overs.
In a twenty-over match, National’s run rate would have carried them to 399. Butt notched the small improvement of some 292 runs over his ODI career strike rate. It was as if he knew where the bowler was aiming before it even left his hand…
Usman Sarwar has never been seen again.
The phantom race-call
In 1939, 3XY racecaller Harry Solomons had a grand idea for a scam.
At a small meeting at Ascot pony track, he had an accomplice cut the wires of his rival radio broadcasters just as a race was about to start. Solomons then claimed there had been a hold-up at the gates, while in fact the real race was being run.
“… and the reason is Buoyancy. Buoyancy has played up very badly at the start a, very very poor exhibition.”
That was the sign for his accomplices listening off-track that Buoyancy had just won, so they could plunge last-minute bets. In the meantime, other accomplices started a fight outside the broadcasting boxes so the rival radio men couldn’t hear what Solomons was saying.
With that, Solomons called the entire race from memory, perfectly to time. Buoyancy saluted, and bookies around the country paid out.
Unfortunately for Solomons, his mate had been a little slow with the tinsnips, and half a cry of “They’re off…” had escaped from one of the other stations.
Suspicions were raised, and Solomons fled to Fiji, where he was later picked up. Oddly, because off-course bookmaking was illegal, he wasn’t charged with defrauding bookies, but was jailed for cutting the other broadcasters’ wires.
Schumacher’s grand theft auto
He may be the most famous and celebrated Formula 1 driver in the world, but for a couple of races earlier in his career, Michael Schumacher pretended to be a flustered pensioner who’d forgotten his glasses.
In Adelaide in 1994, the last race of the season, Schumacher led Damon Hill by a point in the Driver’s Championship when he lost control and clipped a guard barrier before bouncing back onto the track.
As Hill tried to pass, Schumacher steered his damaged car directly into Hill’s path, bending the Englishman’s suspension and ensuring both had to retire. With no points scored between them, the German held on to win the title.
Three years later the scenario repeated, with Schumacher leading Jacques Villeneuve by a point in the season finale in Spain. When his Ferrari started leaking coolant, he pulled it wide, then back into the path of Villeneuve’s Williams. This time, though, the damage wasn’t enough to stop Villeneuve carrying on to win.
The Shoe, of course, denies that either crash was intentional. To crash one opponent, Mr Schumacher, might be regarded a misfortune…
Anyone can play this game
On the topic of people pretending to be cricketers, what about Karl Power? At Headingley during the 2001 Ashes, the Mancunian hoax-merchant dressed up in full England cricket kit, hid in the changeroom toilets for two hours, then took to the pitch when Marcus Trescothick was dismissed.
Unfortunately captain Nasser Hussain had already beaten him to the middle, but no-one tried to stop Power as he ran onto the ground, windmilling his bat and doing stretches. And when it appeared the jig was up, even the police applauded him off the ground.
Power also got himself into a Manchester United team photo, had a hit on Wimbledon centre court before a Tim Henman match, and donned a driver’s suit to beat Michael Schumacher onto an F1 winners podium (to which he was probably just as entitled).
Stay tuned for part 2, coming tomorrow
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