It is a cruel irony that the one item to displace the human tragedy of the devastating floods in Pakistan from top billing on the BBC World Service’s news last weekend was the shocking account of allegations of spot-fixing by members of the Pakistan cricket team currently on tour in England. The tour will continue but the scandal threatens to overshadow the remaining one-day games, even as it has cast doubt on the integrity of previous tour matches and another 80-odd matches involving Pakistan. The whole unsavoury episode has once again highlighted the curse of match-fixing and the influence of shadowy bookmakers operating illegally out of the Indian sub-continent.
The story in brief so far: Scotland Yard is investigating claims by a British newspaper that Pakistani players were involved in spot-fixing, including the deliberate bowling of no-balls during the fourth Test against England at Lord’s. The alleged fixer was also caught on video boasting that the Sydney Test between Pakistan and Australia in January was compromised. Mazhar Majeed, a UK-based property developer and players’ agent, has been arrested on match-fixing charges in London. The police have questioned Pakistan captain Salman Butt and pacemen, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif. The Pakistan Cricket Board is also conducting its own investigation and the latest news is that Messrs Butt, Amir and Asif will take no further part in the tour, although they have not been suspended. The Inter-national Cricket Council has meanwhile promised “prompt and decisive” action against anyone found guilty of match-fixing.
An international furore has broken out in the cricketing world, with several influential people, from cricket writers to former players, calling for Pakistan to be suspended from world cricket and guilty players to be banned for life. Pakistan legends, Imran Khan and Javed Miandad, have also spoken out strongly, with the former saying: “Why should Pakistan cricket suffer if some players have indulged in a crime? Why should Pakistani supporters suffer because of that? The people who are found guilty should be removed from the team and replaced and should be punished as an example for future generations to realise that crime does not pay.”
No matter that the accused players are innocent until proven guilty, they are already guilty by association in the eyes of the media, and public opinion is accordingly negative. Whatever the findings, it will, unfortunately, be difficult to view their future performances (if found innocent) or those of their team-mates, with complete credulity, so insidious are the insinuations. Sadder still is the fact that Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif were responsible for some truly inspiring and at times, nigh unplayable bowling during the Test series in England, with the 18-year old, left-armer, Mohammad Amir being hailed as a great in the making for his mastery of pace and swing, not to mention the wholehearted enthusiasm with which he plays.
But amidst all the breast-beating about cheating and corruption in cricket, there is need for some perspective. Cricket is a ‘gentleman’s game’ only for the most misty-eyed of romantics. True, the sport does embody notions of higher values of fair play, strength of character and sublime artistry, but cricket lost its innocence ten years ago when South Africa’s hitherto much respected captain, Hansie Cronje, admitted that he was a serial fixer and the ensuing scandal exposed players of the calibre of Saleem Malik of Pakistan and Mohammad Azharuddin of India, who both captained their countries. Indeed, in the age of professionalism, a cynical public has become almost inured to cheating, be it doping in athletics, baseball and cycling, faked injuries such as in rugby’s ‘bloodgate,’ and handball and persistent fouling in football.
Nothing seems to stir the blood though so much as match-fixing in cricket, where the purity of the sporting encounter, the engrossing battle between bat and ball and the satisfaction of seeing a great contest, honourably fought, can all be tainted by doubts regarding the legitimacy of dismissals or dropped catches or even, absurdly, whether a no-ball is deliberate or not. As the Australian cricket writer, Gideon Haigh, puts it, “Spot-fixing is a calculated deception; in order to work it has to be. But when sensed to be a factor, it casts doubt on the integrity of every surrounding event. And once a player has known sin, as it were, he makes himself a target for more elaborate malfeasance.”
Mr Haigh and others have also pointed out that the PCB is not immune to the culture of corruption and cronyism endemic in Pakistan. This, taken with the PCB’s chronic maladministration and its failure to provide its players with a nurturing and protective environment – the PCB even manages to make the West Indies Cricket Board look like a Harvard Business School success story by comparison – the absence of international cricket for security reasons, and the lack of opportunities and poor pay for players, makes it believable and perhaps understandable that Pakistani cricketers would be susceptible to the advances of unscrupulous men.
The former Australian fast bowler and Pakistan cricket coach, Geoff Lawson, has made a case for understanding and sympathy, arguing that Pakistan cricket and its problems, reflective of a wider national context dominated by poverty and extremism, made infinitely worse by the floods, should not necessarily be judged by Western standards. He has expressed sadness that a talent such as Mohammad Amir, an impressionable youngster from an impoverished background, might have been led astray as was Mohammad Asif before him. In the West Indies, we can readily recall that Marlon Samuels was banned for two years because of an unfortunate association with an Indian bookie. Many in the region still feel that the most he was guilty of was naiveté and poor judgment and that he was hung out to dry by the WICB.
Of course, there are always mitigating circumstances. Mr Lawson concludes with regard to Mohammad Amir, “while this sort of behaviour may be understandable, that doesn’t make it acceptable.” But as we await the findings of the police, PCB and ICC inquiries, we hope, for the sake of the sport and its followers and the lives of the young men affected, that the whole truth will come out and that commonsense and, more importantly, a sense of perspective will prevail. After all, as the great man asked, “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?”
