When the News of the World’s no-ball scandal broke, Australian media couldn’t get enough. Now with the Ashes looming, the events of recent days have gained far less attention. But make no mistake, they are far more disturbing and sinister than anything Salman Butt could have cooked up.
Over an extraordinary week, Pakistan and South Africa fought out what seemed a timeless clash in their ODI series in the desert heat of the United Arab Emirates. Twice Pakistan won with one wicket and one ball to spare. The intervening game also saw them nine wickets down, this time falling three runs short.
Hashim Amla scored centuries and fifties at will; Shoaib Akhtar found a day of vintage form; and Abdul Razzaq played simply one of the greatest ever one-day innings ever to pull off a heist of Ocean’s Eleven proportions.
Pakistani wicketkeeper Zulqarnain Haider, a recent inclusion in the team, played a crucial part, scoring a calm 19 not out in the chaos of the fourth ODI to square the series at 2-2.
Shortly afterwards, he retrieved his passport from team management on the pretence of buying a sim card, then on the morning of the deciding match, stole away to catch a 6 a.m. flight to London.
From there Haider has claimed he was threatened by an unknown man, who insisted he not interfere with plans to ensure Pakistan lost the final two matches. If he came on board, he would be paid. If he didn’t, he and his family would be killed.
It was too late to avoid playing the fourth ODI, and Haider duly took his side to victory. “The country is like your mother and if you sell that you are nothing,” he said by way of explanation.
But with a wife and two young daughters, he took the threats seriously enough to run before the fifth match. He is seeking asylum in England, and has announced his retirement from all forms of cricket. He is 24 years old.
In his impromptu press conference at a London restaurant, he barely looked even those scant few years. Carefully dressed against the cold in a neat jacket and scarf, he was simply a young man, out of his depth and deeply afraid.
The fact that criminals are prepared to target someone like this only fuels the indignation their actions inspire.
Haider has been criticised by both the PCB and the ICC for not staying and reporting the incident. He said he didn’t want to risk getting others from the team in trouble.
But the subtext is perfectly clear. Haider had no idea who he could trust.
When the no-ball scandal broke, the saddest part was which players were allegedly involved. The bright young captain, the reinvented paceman now in the richest form of his career, and of course the young prodigy, a superstar in the making.
Now the potential loss to the game is yet another of the bright young hopes of Pakistan cricket, and one of the few spots of optimism to emerge from that disastrous tour of England.
A reserve wicketkeeper on the fringes of the squad for some years, Haider broke into the Test side in England last May. He also broke his thumb batting, but scored a long, defiant 88 while his team collapsed around him.
He was immediately sent home with the injury, an over-reaction he was apparently unhappy about. The ever-flaky Kamran Akmal came back to take his place. Subsequent events make it easy to view this decision with scepticism.
Now, after just that one Test, the four ODIs of this series, and three Twenty20 Internationals, Haider’s career is apparently over, the latest victim to the curse of match-fixing.
A range of pundits, including myself, have underestimated exactly how insidious this practice is. To us, match-fixing fell into the Shane Warne/Hansie Cronje mould.
A player could be befriended, given expensive gifts, and softened up. Warne’s ‘experience’ came via a nice gentleman next to him at the roulette table, who paid for him to make some of his bets. It probably seemed quite innocuous at the time.
Then it moves on to the Cronje stage – a relationship is developed, and the fixer proposes that the player might like to tweak a few results and make a lot of money.
In this model, the only deciding factor is the player’s greed, and it’s up to him to make the decision to turn down the offer and report it. If he doesn’t, it’s a failing of moral character. But the choice is entirely with the sportsman – whether or not to take the serpent’s apple.
The reality, though, is that some serpents won’t take no for an answer. If the fruit isn’t tempting enough, they have fangs to back it up.
Suddenly we’ve seen what happens when those fangs are bared. Match-fixers aren’t happily in cahoots with corrupt players as their partners. They are the masters with players in their employ.
Young cricketers like Haider can quickly gain celebrity, but not financial or political clout. An Indian superstar can afford bodyguards and bulletproof glass. A fringe Pakistani player on a low-tier stipend cannot.
The reaction in Pakistan’s administration has been extraordinary.
In a situation where a clearly distressed player needs support and care, his board have instead publicly attacked him for fleeing, and cut off his pay. Pakistani media has alleged that he did a runner after taking a bribe, or that he’d already been told he would be dropped for the final ODI.
Why anyone would sacrifice the rest of their career and risk their life for the sake of one match worth of dirty money is a question beyond the ludicrous, let alone fleeing the country in a hissy fit over non-selection.
Even from here the frustration is immense.
If Pakistan could put a full-strength side on the field, if they could just play without fear or hampering, they would be world-beaters. A cricket-loving nation would get what it deserved.
After the no-ball drama, I strongly opposed the frequent calls to suspend Pakistan outright. It was a kneejerk and simplistic reaction, and I didn’t think the whole nation deserved to suffer for the actions of individuals.
Now it’s clear that the problem is far greater and more dangerous than initially thought. It may well be inextricable. Still, suspending Pakistan is not the answer, not for ethical reasons, but simply because it won’t work.
These match-fixers have shown absolutely no fear, nor any hint of subtlety. They were purportedly circling the one-day series in England just days after the original scandal broke.
With this UAE series being Pakistan’s next international assignment, and with all kinds of ICC and media attention on Pakistan’s results, you would have thought the crooks would choose to lay low.
Not so. They are, as ever, elbow-deep in trouble. So what will the crooks do if Pakistan is suspended?
They’ll wait.
Perhaps they’ll devote more time to courting young Indian players, to tweaking the IPL, maybe looking at the odd Kiwi or West Indian on modest contracts. But for whatever reason, Pakistan seems to be the team with which these fixers are most brazen.
While the men in green could spend a couple of years on the sidelines, and various efforts could be made to root out corrupt players and officials, the process will simply start over as soon as Pakistan re-enters cricket. Businessmen know how to bide their time for opportunities.
In the meantime, Pakistani cricketers would be robbed of the chance to play, those with a martyr complex would be able to cry discrimination, and the children of one of the world’s most enthusiastic cricket nations would have no chance to see their team and dream the dreams that inspires.
Obviously the current squad, with every second result being called into question, does not hail from the field of dreams. But if Haider’s predicament can teach us anything, it’s that anti-corruption is no longer about finding corrupt players and putting the blame on them.
It’s about protecting players from the influence of those criminals tinkering with the game from the outside.
Radical steps need to be taken.
A successful manipulation of betting markets requires match-fixers to be able to order changes and results at short notice. Which in turn requires them to be able to communicate with players.
How was an unknown individual with a couple of henchmen able to approach Haider without anyone else around, for instance? Remove the possibility of that approach, and you remove the fixer’s power.
If they can’t contact players, then they can’t make threats or promises, nor issue demands. So make it so. It won’t be easy, but it could be done.
Have ICC or law enforcement officials accompany Pakistan during any series they play. Haider suggested all players’ phones should be tapped. Perhaps they should. Or simply confiscate mobile phones for the duration, so that incoming calls go through the accompanying officials, and identities can be verified.
Restrict any access to the team hotel, and escort any players who want to go out. Conversations with anyone who approaches them could be recorded, suspicious interactions reported.
This may seem draconian, but in the end it would be for the safety of the players and their families. The criminals involved are like criminals in any other empire. They see the people they use as nothing more than a means to their own personal enrichment. The players are not human beings, simply Monopoly markers.
The ICC has to move decisively and ruthlessly. Starve the fixers of oxygen. Tighten restrictions until they can no longer breathe. Only then will they have to move on elsewhere.
That field of dreams needs to be reclaimed. It is the reason we watch sport, the reason we invest so much of ourselves in these strange dramas of other people. It is because we see it as the striving to excel, to exceed, to overcome limitations. It gives us hope.
When the spectre of corruption, of tampering, becomes involved, the dream dissolves as quickly as that of any morning nap. And in Haider’s case, his sporting dream has become a case of cold sweats and night terrors.
So give the man his dream back. And the kids in Pakistan, and those of us who are still kid enough to thrill to the sight of an inside-out cover drive, a reverse-swinging yorker, an underdog comeback.
I have a dream too. It’s simple, but at the moment, rather distant. Not of thirty-ball hundreds or ten-wicket innings.
I dream that one day we’ll watch Zulqarnain Haider walk back out to the middle of a cricket ground and take guard, ready to try and win a match without fear.
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