Recently I’ve been talking about the latest Pakistan match-fixing scandal with a friend who has had a long involvement with New Zealand cricket. He told me that a number of matches in the 1980s involving Pakistan and New Zealand were probably fixed.
The elephant in the room over the current crisis is that the cricket world is obsessed with how the News of the World investigation is playing itself out without really putting it into a context of a decades long history of match-fixing by Pakistan teams in all forms of cricket.
Cricket can, in President Johnson’s phrase, ‘fart and walk at the same time.’ There should be a relentless pursuit of the match-fixing uncovered by the News of the World. But the ICC should not wait for any findings (if any) to come out the current investigations. It should act ruthlessly now.
The Pakistan cricketers must be advised that everything they do, on and off the field, will be monitored relentlessly. The worse possible motivation will be attributed to inexplicable play on the field, until an acceptable explanation is offered.
In other words, Pakistan cricket is guilty until it proves itself innocent.
This is tough. It is probably against the laws of privacy and human rights. But the courts have generally supported sporting institutions when they have instigated special remedies to cope with specific problems inside their sport.
This tough/love measure must be followed by direct action by the ICC to force the officials in Pakistan and Zimbabwe to allocate a meaningful share of the cricket money pouring into the national bodies to the players themselves.
One of the more disgusting sights at international cricket events is the way the delegates from Zimbabwe and Pakistan flaunt the fact that they have siphoned off almost all the cricket money their countries are allocated from television rights for themselves.
If the Pakistan players are paid what they should be paid, there will be much less pressure from their ‘agents’ to accept bribes to bowl no-balls at specific times, bat with such extreme caution that they fail to reach even a low total in a ODI, conspire to drop catches, and stuff up run-outs to make sure that a certain victory is turned (to the great profit of bookmakers) into an unexpected loss.
The Indian government is looking at proposals to legalise the country’s underground gambling market.
The looking should stop. Do it.
Organise something like a TAB system, with the government getting a commission from the money gambled. And make the punishment for underground gambling so draconian that the wide-boys who now dominate the cricket gambling industry will give up the trade and perhaps try to make their money by going straight.
As for the current investigation being undertaken by the ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit, we shouldn’t hold our breath for any result in the near future.
The unit, after all, looked into the farcical Sydney Test in which fields were set by Pakistan to ensure that a number 10 batsman Peter Siddle could stay with Michael Hussey until a reasonable lead was established.
Hussey, himself, was dropped several times and survived a run-out which was botched by an iron-gloved wicket-keeper.
A difficulty the unit will find in trying to establish exactly the facts of the fix exposed by the News of the World is revealed in the testimony of Yasir Hameed, and the reaction to this testimony by team-mates.
Hameed, a journeyman opening batsmen, has been recorded by the News of the World as saying that “Pakistan have been fixing almost every match.”
Shahid Afridi, Pakistan’s one-day cricket, dismisses this allegation on the grounds that Hameed “mentally is 15 -16 … People know what type of character he is.”
This is the same Afridi who tried to bite into a cricket ball as if it were a red apple. This bizarre action, one of the most inexplicable actions I’ve ever seen on a cricket field, has never been explained. It raises the question of who really has the mental age of 15 – 16.
We can make the fearless prediction right now that the ICC will take years to establish the truth of the News of the World sting, if it ever does.
This is all the more reason why the ICC should act now in setting out rules that are tough and which if enforced will be more effective in cleaning up the game than the current policy of essentially turning a blind eye to what is, and has been for decades, obvious to anyone with an interest in cricket.
This means the ICC should accept the fact of a decades-old culture of corruption in cricket; that the perpetrators of this corruption have been, in the main, grossly underpaid Pakistani players; that these players must be paid appropriately by the Pakistan Board of Cricket; and that any inexplicable loss or hard to understand sequence of events (like 42 no-balls when opponents easily chase down 324 in the second innings or five dropped sitters in one innings) must be seen, initially at least, as suspect play by Pakistan. And the authorities must quickly regulate the Indian gambling industry.
The decades long farce of the wink, wink mentality has to end. If it doesn’t cricket could go the way of professional wrestling, a sport with world wide interest which was corrupted by vested interests that turned it into a rigged entertainment.
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