The recent developments revealing Pakistani cricket’s ties to the underworld should surprise no one. When the ICC submitted to the power of the subcontinent bloc in return for the geyser of revenues on offer it sold the soul of the game, a fair contest, to the highest bidder, organised crime.
The sub-continent bloc, which today controls the game, is made up of nations where corruption isn’t simply tolerated, it is considered a part of the landscape. Whilst these are beautiful nations, filled with charming people, their concept of legal fairness and equality is born from another world.
Look at the world corruption perceptions index and only India rates in the top half of countries around the world (85/185), and even then it ranks behind such shining incorruptible lights as Columbia, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Worse still, the nations of Bangladesh and Pakistan are considered so corrupt that they rank below Nigeria, the namesake of the much loved email scams that assail inboxes around the globe.
When regions such as this hold the political sway, the question to be asked is not “is the game corruptible,” it is “how corrupted is it”. One small blessing is that we will never know the true extent to which our sport has been tainted as it is against the interests of the subcontinent to pull back the curtain.
One dangerous caveat when entering into this arrangement was that, as we suck from the revenue teat of Asia, we were required to play by the rules of our hosts, and those rules include turning a blind eye to allow monetary gain to circumvent even the most basic and sacred rules of law.
This is the decision we made when we took the cheque, and one question the litany of other sports looking to expand their powerbase into Asia need to ask is, was it worth it?
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