Lawyers and bookmakers are rubbing their hands in glee as they are the only ones who will gain from cricket’s latest embarrassment.
So many ingredients in a stew simmering on cricket’s creaking stove and it is so apt that I find myself in South Africa for the Airtel Champions League T20 Cricket tournament, because it is here that I enjoyed some of the most rewarding years of my working life, and it is here that the sinister world of match-fixing in cricket came to light through the deeds of a former South African cricket captain, Hansie Cronje.
Cry, the Beloved Country is a wonderful book by the South African author, Alan Paton, first published in 1948, a year before the implementation of Apartheid as law by the South African government. It is a heart-rendering novel, as the title itself suggests, and I draw parallels with the game of cricket as it stands today, hence my personal lament of “Cry, the Beloved Game.”
Cricket’s latest addition to its family — the Twenty20 razzmatazz — is full of energy, bright vivid colours, unchained imagination, natural expression, fun and sheer enjoyment. That applies to players and spectators alike. Unfortunately, the dark, sinister world of the underground moneymen — the illegal bookmakers — is diluting the entire mosaic. The dark clouds of match-fixing and spot-fixing emanating from England, where the Pakistan team is on tour this summer, is casting an uncomfortable shadow across cricket’s beautiful landscape.
How sad it is that an 18-year-old fast bowler, Mohammad Aamer, had to return to Pakistan with his young captain, Salman Butt, when he should have been enjoying the splendour of his youth as one of the game’s brightest prospects. How sad it is that the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board has come out in the media with allegations that it is England players — allegedly — who have been involved in this whole sordid mess of taking money from the game illegally. It is a sorry tit-for-tat exacerbated through newspapers and television cameras that has now reached ministerial level in England.
Lawyers and bookmakers are rubbing their hands in glee for they are the only ones who will gain from cricket’s latest maelstrom. It all reads like a John le Carre novel right now, except that we do not know where it will all end, if ever it will.
As long as there is money and there is sport, there will always be betting, so it is a question of living with the beast, not killing it. It is a dangerous animal but somehow we have to tame the monster that right now is threatening to tear the game of cricket apart.
The ultimate responsibility lies with the players themselves. The ICC has attempted to isolate the players from unwanted visitors to dressing rooms and has banned the use of mobile phones during matches, but that is little more than adding garnish to the prepared dish.
The game is rotten when the players themselves have agreed to take the money. If the Pakistani players who have been banned by the ICC and have departed from the tour of England are found to be guilty through police procedures and the courts, then they can expect a lifetime ban.
I am convinced that the rotten apples who are still in the game can be found out and thrown out of cricket’s basket. Checking of bank accounts and phone bills is a daily agenda for fraud police the world over, so a peek at a cricketer’s bank balance shouldn’t be a major problem, and if he is driving a Ferrari, ask him what happened to the Ford he used to drive.
If cricket is being decimated by a series of tabloid newspaper allegations, and the ICC together with the police have still not made any charges against those implicated, then where are we going?
We have been here before. Have we not learned from South Africa?
Cry, the beloved game.
