Asks Tony Cozier
When Mark Waugh and Shane Warne were fined by the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) for providing “routine pitch and weather details” to bookmakers during Australia’s tour of Sri Lanka in 1994 (an incident that took four years to come to light), both acknowledged that they had been “naïve and stupid.”
The same is true of Marlon Samuels’s association with the gambler Mukesh Kochar on the West Indies tour of India 15 months ago that has now brought him a two-year ban under the International Cricket Council (ICC) code of conduct – except that Samuels was even more “naïve and stupid.”
In the 14 years since the two Australians were conned, international cricketers have been repeatedly forewarned of the entrapment they face from the criminal underworld on the Indian sub-continent always ready to exploit the obsession with gambling in a nation that deems it unlawful.
If they don’t bother to read the ICC’s relevant clauses in its code of conduct or pay attention to the omnipresent officers of the ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit established specifically to fight this scourge, there are several high profile examples of the consequences if they are ensnared.
All should be more acquainted with this side of the game than they are with its basic laws.
For all that, Samuels allowed himself to be duped by someone who described himself as a “father figure.”
Unaware of the ramifications, Samuels’s mother even told of telephone calls inquiring after the player’s well-being when injury kept him out of the game.
To her and her son, Kochar seemed a nice, caring man, not a schemer angling to gain the confidence of a gullible international cricketer for future illicit purposes.
Samuels might have reckoned that the details he provided to Kochar on the phone prior to last year’s ODI against India at Nagpur were irrelevancies.
The term “match fixing” almost certainly would not have entered his thoughts.
If that was all, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) disciplinary committee that heard his case might have accepted a plea of ignorance and been lenient. It indicated as much in dismissing the charge that Samuels “engaged in conduct which, in the opinion of the Executive Board, relates directly or indirectly to the rules of conduct…and is prejudicial to the interests of the game of cricket.”
What did him in was allowing Kochar to pay his hotel bill when he stayed on in Mumbai for a few days following the official India tour. That meant that he “received money, benefit or other reward which could bring him or the game of cricket into disrepute.”
It was the classic method Kochar and those of his ilk use to cultivate their inside informers. More lucrative financial favours would have followed with the expectation of more in return.
There is now plenty of time for Samuels to consider his future – when the ban expires, he will be 29 and, if he puts his mind to it, there would be still a few good years ahead of him – and for other players to be aware of the sleaze that stalks the game.
As for the ICC, there are questions still to be answered.
The most obvious was posed during the week by Rashid Latif, one-time Pakistan wicket-keeper who was one of the first cricketers to blow the whistle on crooked teammates.
“So far, we have seen only players banned or fined for such offences but never any of those people who were involved in spreading corruption in the sport,” he said. “Samuels is a prime example. They have banned him but what about the person who made contact with him and gave him money. Doesn’t the ICC have information about him.”
