cricket with balls

We can all sit down and think about how shit this all this is.  Or we can look for positives.  Or at the very least ways people can sound smugger. If you all can’t get at least one positive (smug statement) from these, you just aren’t trying hard enough.

Honours Bored

North, Watson and Stuart Broad all have their names on the Honours board at Lord’s.  Frankly, I couldn’t give a shit, but if this bothers you, mentally you can put an asterisk next to them.  Or you can do a lord’s tour and just write an asterisk on,   See, isn’t that better.

Fucken Donkeys

I hate donkeys, and I am sure you do too.  So I am sure you are glad that people are stoning them for their involvement with spot fixing.

I told you so

For those who spent their whole life doubting Pakistan’s performances, good and bad, revel.

The upset

Anyone who is not as distraught as you clearly didn’t love cricket as much as you.  If you want to spend three weeks cutting your arms and crying, you can.

Indians who hate Pakistanis

You can put this on the list of things that Pakistan have done that you use to make yourself feel superior.  Although, that Shoaib Malik is from Pakistan is probably enough for most Indians.

Australians who hate Indians

For those who haven’t decided to blame Pakistan’s completely dodgy culture, remember that India was mentioned somewhere wasn’t it, Fucken Indians, ruining the game, etc.

English who hate all colonies

You can give it a bit of we gave you a beautiful game, let you come to our sacred venue and you shat on it.  From now on Lord’s can only be used for Eton vs Harrow matches.

Nathan Hauritz haters

The man has two five wicket hauls, both against Pakistan…

The eternal optimists

Obviously all 7 players had family members or pets kidnapped, they were just doing it for their families.

Historical buffs

Why this is nothing, in 1786 there was a game of cricket when both sides were bowled out for no runs and the game was decided on intentional wides.

T20 fans

Fuck you test lovers, our game is pure, and yours is dirty.  Lalit Modi rocks.

People who hate sport’s agents

Let us not forget that the man in charge of this was an agent.  Sport’s agents are ruining sport, and are obviously shit at not selling their players out.  How has Amir not got a deal with a rubber testicle company yet?  “They said I bowled no balls on purpose, but yours are by accident, so try replace-a-ball, because you want your lady to cup them with confidence.”

All cricket fans

Let’s not lie, we love a bit of scandal.  In fact, even though we know cricket has always been a bit dirty, we like to pretend it isn’t just so we can react more to the scandal.  The spirit of cricket people love this so they can tut tut.  The cricket tragic love the fact cricket is back on the front page.  The cricket sadists love it because it gives them more jokes.  There is something for everyone here.  It’s a proper scandal.

It is difficult to find anything new to say on the whole match fixing story, at least at this stage, so what follows is a very personal view.

For my part, I haven’t believed that cricket was 100% clean for several years. Not since the Cronje affair. But I could never see how anyone would fix an element of a game.

It always seemed too complicated, too risky, to fix the batting element. It is all very well to bet on a batsman getting a duck, and paying him to get a duck, but suppose some butterfingered clot drops the catch and it runs away for four?

On the other hand, as Miss Marple put it there’s always “…the need for greed, and the desire to be wicked.”

I don’t believe that there has not been some element of fixing at some time in any sport. It is as easy for a bowler in cricket to bowl a no ball as it is for a rugby player to miss a kick, and we know of betting on events in football matches already.

What really annoys me about all of this is that it is now a decade since Cronje and cricket administrators have spent the intervening time with their head in the sands over the whole issue. Did no-one tell them that bad things don’t go away just because you pretend they are not there? (I tried this with my overdraft for many years, but it didn’t work)

Unfortunately, the utter spinelessness of the Pakistan Cricket Board makes their players a prime target for those with no love for the game, but a lot of love for money. The criminals know – and some of the players have clearly worked out – that there is a good chance to make a lot of money without a player’s career being affected in any significant way at all. Not in a country where a lifetime ban lasts for roughly six months.

That the ICC are going to investigate the affair fills me with no confidence, either. The ICC would allow themselves to be sodomised by a rabid stray dog if they thought it would keep the Asian block vote happy. And having your governing body in thrall to the  parts of the world where the corruption is pre-eminent is never a good idea for any sport.

We all want cricket to be clean. But this sort of thing is going to happen again and again until the people running the sport grow some balls. Now would be a very good time for them to do so.

The last edition of the cricket sadist’s quarterly had a piece on spot fixing written by me.  It’s now tragically out of date, but I think it’s worth a read.

About a year ago a cricketer contacted me to talk about fixing in cricket.  He was positive it was happening again, at ICL, IPL and International level.  He even specified games that he and others thought it had happened in.  I checked into these games and came up with other reasons why things happened the way they did.

The player was very upset, but he didn’t see how coming forward would help out.

In the next few weeks I was contacted by other cricketers and officials who gave me similar stories.  Some were major names in international cricket, and some lesser known. All of them hoped I could do something, but like them I could do little.  They had no evidence, just strong hunches, none of them would speak publicly about this, and all I could do was write on my site in the vaguest possible terms.

Since then spot fixing has come to the attention of the mainstream media and seems as close to taking over cricket as it was at the end of the 90s.

Essex players have been arrested by police. Shakib Al Hasan has come out saying people have offered him money before.  Lalit Modi accused Chris Cairns of being involved in fixing in the ICL.  Pakistani government officials line up waiting to accuse Pakistan of fixing anytime they lose.  And there were reports of 27 players in the IPL being under scrutiny (which was later refuted).

The players involved are from around the globe; this isn’t some dirty little Subbie problem.  The betting might be based in India, but as we learnt in the late 90s, the players involved are from everywhere.

During the late 90s you could throw a stone in International cricket and hit someone who was doing something that was less than ethical with bookies. The majority of the players involved got off scot-free, but cynical fans still believe that almost everyone was involved.  I once heard Peter Roebuck say that he put Sanath Jayasuriya on a pedestal, and one reason was that he was 100% sure he didn’t interact with bookies unethically, and there were few other players of that generation of whom he thought the same. There is no way to know if that is true now, but fixing in cricket is here.  If the spirit of cricket actually existed (and wasn’t some construct by a gin sipping crusty old man) fixing games would surely not be allowed.

Few sports in history have been devised to allow betting on them more than cricket.  Some scholars have stated that cricket was formed the way it was, because of the betting on the early matches.  Allowing people to bet on each ball, over, wicket, boundary, wide, or batsmen is certainly going to get the attention of bookies.  The more ways someone can bet on a sport, the more they are likely to.

The player who was supposed to keep wicket for England in the first ever test match, Ted Pooley, was instead in jail in New Zealand.  Apparently Pooley had bet on the individual scores of each batsmen: he said they would all score ducks and would claim £1 for each duck.  Depending on reports there were between 8 and 11 ducks (the team they were playing had 22 players), and Pooley had been umpire.  When the local businessman who was supposed to pay out didn’t, Pooley beat him up, which is why he was in jail.  This was in 1877.

That was a fairly obvious case of something, either match fixing, bad umpiring, or a bad bet by the local businessman.  Now it is not so easy to spot. Unless phone calls, tax records, or witnesses come forward, how can you stop a bowler in a largely meaningless televised T20 game, like in the IPL, Big Bang or in English County Cricket, ensuring his over goes for more than ten.  Or for a batsman to ensure that the 33^rd over is a maiden in a one-day match.

It is almost impossible; there are so many ways a cricketer to spot-fix a game, so few ways we can detect it, and a truckload of largely unimportant games for the players to fix in.

Some people have talked about education; making sure the players know that taking money or even just talking to bookies can lead to loads of shit.  But if cricket has showed us anything it is that even someone with the education of L Ron Stanford (sure he only went to College in Waco, Texas, but he still went there) can be moved by money over honour.

When talking to one of my moles, I was told about ICL games that were so dodgy that both teams were trying to lose key moments at the same time.  Some players reported that the games were so farcical, it was like they were scripted. If that were true, it meant that in one game of cricket, two loads of dodgy men had put money on poor performances for either side.  Think of the level of corruption required in the game for that to happen.

This year in England’s domestic T20 event they are bringing in the ICC’s anti-match fixing unit to watch the games much more closely.  This was probably brought about by the arrest of Mervyn Westfield and Danish Kaneria after suspected match fixing in an Essex Pro40 game last year.  People who have seen Westfield bowl before are at a loss for words at the thought of him getting paid by bookies to bowl expensive overs in limited overs cricket, as they thought that is what Essex did.

I wouldn’t want to be the person in charge of finding spot fixing.  Look at any Pakistani cricket game.  Saeed Ajmal dropped three catches in one T20 match, Kamran Akmal refused to glove a ball cleanly against Australia, Mohammad Yousuf captained like it was his first game of cricket in the same game, Shahifd Afridi’s whole batting career must raise red flags and that is just the really blatantly obvious ones.  It could be that all of these are match fixing, or that none are.  How the fuck could we know?

Think about this scenario.  An aging seamer is on his way out of international cricket, he is playing a one day international, and someone offers him 10,000 clams to bowl two wides in his 3^rd over.  He will make more with those two wides than he will playing close to ten ODIs.  His international career is virtually over, he is cashing in, and all he has to do is remember to bowl two wides in his third over.

Do you think you could spot the difference between a bowler bowling two wides in an over on purpose or by accident?

Therein lies the problem.  Unless the bookies are really poor with their choices of who they go after, or with the phone and money details, how would we know?  We can’t rely on players as they are only human, some less so, the ICC can’t do much right, chances are they won’t make this their one victory and individual boards are likely to protect players involved as Australia has already done in the past.   I’m not sure where that leaves us.

As fans we can do little more than hope more players forget to match fix like Herschelle Gibbs did, or the players and bookies involved make mistakes like they did with the newly born again sainted Hansie.  Only a proper international scandal will make the bookies crawl back into their gutters for a while.

10.  Tony Grieg arrives at your door step.

“No need to grovel, I’ll happily come in and spend all night chatting to you and your Asian bride”.

9.  You could be giving birth to a child and ask for a an epidural and have Allan Border come in.

“If you can’t hack it, let’s get a tough Queenslander out here - get me Greg Ritchie”.

8.  You could find yourself in a 7 hour press conference of a former great international as he battles rumours that he is gay.

“I’m not gay, not that there is anything wrong with that, some of my best friend’s are gay, my brother is.”.

7.  You could be on a beach in the Caribbean when two joints are thrown onto your lap by Pakistani cricketers who see the cops coming.

“Our religion forbids us from putting anything like that in our bodies.”

6.  Allen Stanford could sit on your lap.

“I’ve learnt a lot of oral presentation skills in jail”.

5.  By accident you could pick up Mohammad Asif’s bag.

“No I didn’t pack it, and to be honest, I’m just a goat herder.”

4.  Find yourself sitting to Darrell Hair on a 24 hour flight the day after spot fixing allegations against Pakistanis.

“I Fucken told you, I told you all, I did, every one of you, ha ha, and Murali is a chucker.”

3.  Make a “your mumma is so” joke to any of Glenn McGrath’s children.

“If you ever mention my Fucken mum again…”

2.  Wake up in a soundproof basement at Andre Nel’s house secured to a metal slab.

“Rise and shine, Samit. You’re probably wondering where you are. I’ll tell you where you might be. You might be in the room that you die in”.

1.  Develop a mental condition that means that every part of your life is commentated on by Laxman Sivaramakrishnan.

“Oh what a wonderful crap that is, it’s struggling to get out though, this is a real tough one now.  She is really straining, will she be able to come through this?”

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