Cricket, the once-upon-a-time gentleman’s game, hit its nadir when a tiny bug named “Match- fixing” bit it hard and no one would have imagined that even after 10 years of its prevalence, cricket still struggles to break through the tentacles and free itself. The wounded minds of the cricket fans still stir up in pain when they are reminded of a Hansie Cronje and Mohammed Azharuddin, reminded of their deeds off the field and not their prowess on the field. To quote the famous lines of Dale Earnhardt, “You can’t let one bad moment to spoil a bunch of good ones” but the human brain is such, that one bad moment is good enough to forget thousands of good ones. And unfortunate it was that the above mentioned names allowed that one bad moment to eclipse all the hard work they had put in to be the Cricketing giants they were in their era.
Roots of Match Fixing
1919 - The first ever match fixing incident was reported when bookies bribed few players of the Chicago White Sox Team to rig the World Series.
Mid 1980s - The tournaments staged in Sharjah were accused of betting and match fixing.
2000 – Cricket wasn’t spared either when Hansie Cronje admitted to have thrown a match away for money from the bookmarkers. Names like Mohammad Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja followed and they were handed life bans by the governing body.
Cricket was never the same since then. It was ridiculous to believe the kind of control, the underworld and the bookies exercised over the sport. It was disheartening to see people trampling over the national colours to get a bite of coins. Rewind to the glorious 90s when limited overs cricket was at the zenith.. The sight of a tear away pacer steaming in to bowl at a lightning quick pace and disappearing off the bat at double the rate, brought a twinkle to the eyes. The volcanic eruptions in the stands and the ever so enthusiastic voice of Tony Greig calling the game, gives cricket fans goose bumps even now. But that is when, everything actually started going wrong.. The dark clouds of match fixing were looming large then and when Pakistan lost a game to the meek Bangladeshis in the 1999 World Cup, people had to voice their opinions but it was not confined only to cricketing reasons. Fingers were pointed at the chastity of the game and the murmur was slowly transforming into a loud cry. Start of the new millennium and the match fixing row found new wings to engulf Planet Cricket. Cronje accepting the charges filed against him and consequently, being banned for life from playing any form of cricket, was a fatal blow to the game. Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja, Saleem Malik were talked about for reasons far from cricket. Immediate bans were handed out but were such steps enough to re-instill the faith and belief in the mind and heart of a common man who used to shell out a part of his hard earned money to follow the game? Certainly not! A few regained faith after witnessing the Classic at the Eden Gardens in 2001 and a few continue to follow the game unconditionally because of a man named Sachin Tendulkar.
But here, we are not just concerned about the fans but also the people who have stained the beautiful game of cricket. This is not the first time that cricket has been accused of such infamous incidents and Pakistan is certainly not a first-timer in such an unceremonious event.
The Not-so-glorious past for Pakistan
Saleem Malik – Banned for life in the year 2000 for having offered bribes.
Ata-ur-Rehman – Banned for life in the same year.
Wasim Akram lost his captaincy for allegedly offering 1 lac to Ata-ur-Rehman to under perform against New Zealand in 1993.
Shoaib Akhtar claimed that he had been offered a briefcase full of money to under perform on their tour to India in 2007.
Danish Kaneria was questioned by Essex Police in the year 2009 for spot fixing.
Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan were banned for life after their shambolic show against Australia in 2010. Rana Naved and Shoaib Malik were banned for a year each.
Kamran Akmal is still being probed by the ICC for his shambolic display in the 2nd Test match against Australia at Sydney. He has been accused of dropping four catches deliberately in that match.
It’s certainly not a scenario where Pakistan is not going through enough. Pakistan as a nation is already in doldrums, thanks to the administrative malfunctions, both in politics and cricket, not to forget the never ending talks about terrorism. And if at all, you want to ignore all the malfunctions, you certainly cannot ignore the saddest story of all where Pakistan as a cricket team doesn’t have a home. Dubai turns up as their adopted home at times and sometimes it’s England. So sad is the story that it sometimes becomes difficult to know whether it’s a home series or an away game for them. After a forgetful series against the Australians, forgetful not just for cricketing reasons but also for throwing catches/matches, Pakistan must have been raring to make a new beginning but being controversy’s favourite and obedient child, they had to bear the allegations made against Kamran Akmal who was accused of dropping four catches deliberately in the second Test match against the Australians at Sydney. And as if it was not enough, the two most promising quickies of recent times, both on performance and form got themselves strangled in a Spot Fixing scandal along with their newly appointed skipper Salman Butt.
Spot Fixing? In match fixing, the players threw matches away by under performing and while spot fixing looks to be a small part of it, a collaboration of such tiny incidents can eventually lead to throwing a match away. The funniest part of the story is that the players under performed while fixing a match, here in spot fixing, they over performed by over-stepping and that too by a country mile. Many would not want to laugh at this comparison but the act is certainly ridiculous.
According to a sensational Sting Operation carried out by the News of the World tabloid, it was indeed ridiculously easy to trap these cricketers. All it took the undercover reporter was to meet a London-based property dealer named Mazhar Majeed who also happened to be a manager to many of the Pakistani players with their endorsements and brand tie-ups. The undercover reporter met this man at the plush Hilton in Park Lane to cover one of the most important stories of his life. According to the reports, Majeed boasted of fixing matches for Pakistan in the past and that too with a lot of ease. He also claimed that the Sydney Test between Australia and Pakistan was rigged and he made 1.3 million pounds out of it. Majeed was spurred on by the reporter who had initially come in with a proposal to rope in a few Pakistani stars for some glitzy cricket tournament.
On being asked about betting, Majeed spilled the beans on it claiming that it was a walk in the park since a pool of players were already into it and he was making a lot of money with it. The claims that he went on making during that conversation strengthened the speculation of how bad a rut, cricket finds itself in, not just Pakistani cricket. Majeed went on to claim that he could easily fix spots and on being offered a massive sum of 1,40,000 pounds, Majeed revealed the information which created ripples for the times to come.
Mohammad Asif and Aamer went on to bowl no-balls exactly as Majeed had predicted. They were not mere no-balls, they were like a dagger which ripped apart the hearts of the cricket fans all around the world. It was not a case where Asif was blamed for the first time. He had already found himself out of the cricket field for having carried drugs with him in the past. But spare a thought for Aamer, a young man, who was being touted as the next big thing in the World of Cricket. There might be a bit of leniency working in his favour, thanks to his age, but is this how it should be? Salman Butt has also been accused to be one of the prime movers in this dark period and ICC has already taken stern action by banning them for time unknown.
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| Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer (L to R) |
Majeed went on to reveal how exactly the whole method of Spot fixing works? There are small brackets set where a batting side might be asked to score a certain amount of runs and they start off briskly to give an impression that they would overtake it. What follows that, is a dry period where not many runs are scored and finally the people who had put their money, knowing the actual information, derive the rewards. The same formula works for the bowlers too. The next revelation he made was one of the most shocking ones. Both the batsmen and the bowlers have their own ways to indicate that the plans are on. The bowlers might stop midway in their run up and the batsmen might just ask for a change of gloves at a stipulated time.
No doubts that such operations have been christened as Sting Operations. They do sting the whole cricketing fraternity and the venom that goes in with it, leaves a bad taste. Once, the players dreamt of playing in their national colours and now those dreams have been put up for “SALE”. All these events convey a sad story and it’s ultimately cricket which suffers.
Now what does the governing body do? Is handing out life bans going to be enough, especially when we have had many such bans in the past only to witness such incidents again and again? They say, time is the best healer but it’s been a decade now and the worries seem to be aggravating all the time.
Cricket’s bleeding at the moment. The current times are pregnant with a horde of questions against the chastity of the game. It’s time for the cricket administrative bodies to join hands before trying to clean the stains. It’s time for the ICC to stand up tall and be the coagulant.
Despite all the ballyhoo, a die-hard cricket fan would still like to believe that nothing beats a gorgeous drive through the covers. Nothing comes close to a perfect away swinging delivery which does the batsman in. Nothing comes close to the drama when a fielder fumbles or fails to cling on to a catch in the dying stages of a match. But what if someone says that it was just because of a bowler intentionally bowling it wide outside the stumps? What if someone says that it was a batsman who deliberately didn’t score rather than the bowler bowling too well? What if someone questions the integrity of a fielder who has put down a catch for reasons more than just sheer pressure?
There would be a lot of questions in the minds of the fan. Would you dare to believe that the bowler actually missed his count when he stopped midway in his run up? Would you want to believe that it’s just the perspiration which leads to a change of gloves for the batsman? Would you not think twice?
This article was written in Sept. 2010 and was published in P3..Not Just Page 3, followed by Cricbuzz.
