Pakistani spot fixers

Pakistan is a country I’ve never visited, and one I’ve never wanted to go to.   The great England all-rounder Ian Botham once memorably described it, back in the early 80’s, as the “sort of place you send your mother-in-law on holiday.”  For that little gem, just before an England cricket tour there, the great man was severely reprimanded by the game’s then governing body, fined by the team’s management and roundly condemned by the British and Pakistani press, whilst at the same time having many a glass raised in his honour in pubs and clubs throughout the country.

Since then, it has suffered a decline in standards that were clearly already low.  It has suffered many natural disasters, most recently wide-spread flooding that ruined a large percentage of its arable land and caused billions of dollars-worth of infrastructure damage, including entire villages washed away leaving much of its population homeless and living in tents.   It has lived through a military dictatorship, then a more even-handed military rule and is now, technically at least, a democracy – although one that is accused of widespread corruption and human rights abuses.  Its northern provinces border Afghanistan, and are a lawless mountainous wilderness where the tribal elders rule rather than any elected representatives.  The region is recognized as a safe haven for Taliban “freedom fighters” – for which read Islamic fundamentalists who wish to regain control of Afghanistan and re-impose the brutal regime they governed the country with before being forcibly evicted by US-led forces as part of the War on Terror ten years or so ago.   It is also a haven for al Qaeda extremists, and indeed Osama bin Laden, that organisation’s leader, was holed up quite openly in a small town only about 50 miles from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, within yards of the nation’s police academy, for many years, until he was killed by US forces, earlier this year – much to the outrage of many Pakistanis.  

So not a very nice place then.

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But throughout all this, its cricket team has been highly regarded, and at times rated the best in the world in one form of the game or another.  At times brilliant and at others rubbish, it has been as erratic as, say, England…….but because the sport is so popular in Pakistan (far more so than in England, if a little less than in India, where cricket is a religion) its players have always been considered national heroes and afforded a lifestyle beyond the wildest dreams of the vast majority of the population. 

Unfortunately, with that elevated status has come greed.  The vast riches (at least by Pakistani standards) and adulation has been insufficient for some players, and there have been allegations of match fixing and corruption for years.  Gambling is endemic throughout the sub-continent – as prevalent in India as in Pakistan – but illegal, and so this huge industry has grown under the control of criminal syndicates.  But the betting is not merely on the result of any given match: you can bet on pretty much anything.  How many wides will be delivered by the bowlers between lunch and tea intervals, for instance, or how many sixes a particular batsman will hit during the match.  Even whether the opposition captain will wear a cap or a sun hat when coming out for the coin toss before start of play.

With such a wide range of possible wagers, and such huge numbers of people willing to take a punt on them, massive amounts of money can be made by these syndicates, and with more money on the table comes of course a desire to “influence” the betting.  Enter the players.

Cricket is team sport, and I don’t believe it is possible for an individual to win a game on his own.   There are just too many variables that are beyond the control of even the best players – the performances of 21 other players, to start with, plus those of three umpires.  The weather.  The state of the pitch.  No, it’s just not possible to “fix” an entire match and guarantee a particular result, no matter how much cash is at stake.  However, if a syndicate can buy off a player or two, paying them to take particular actions – dropped catches, for instance – then huge amounts can be made without necessarily changing the result of a match, and hence without drawing much attention to what is going on.  

But cricketers talk to each other – it’s a great part of the game, even at the highest level, two teams socializing in the dressing rooms and the bar after the day’s play that is missing in most other sports – and rumours of “spot fixing” (as the practice is known) have been around for years.  Pakistan and its cricketers have always been at the forefront of these rumours, but nothing has ever been proven.    There was one wicket-keeper, several years ago, described by a Daily Telegraph reporter in a pre-tournament preview as being “excitable but poor, given to appealing every time he finds the ball lodged in his gloves, whether or not it has gone anywhere near the bat.”   A perfect candidate for the spot-fixer – no-one would be surprised if he spilled the odd chance.  The rumours swirled around, he dropped as many chances as he pouched, but nothing was ever proven one way or another.  There were other players implicated over the years, but no proof.

Then last year, the team toured England, and it all fell apart.  In true British tabloid fashion, the now defunct News of the World mounted an operation that resulted in the agent of three of the team’s leading players, including the captain, being filmed receiving GBP150,000 in cash, in return for no-balls being bowled at specific times during the Lords test.  The man paying over the money was a NotW reporter (who had pulled off other stunts in the past, including one on the England football manager Sven-Goran Ericsson).  Some of the money (marked of course) turned up in the hotel rooms of the implicated players.

Sure enough, the next day at Lords, the three no-balls were delivered right on cue.  They weren’t even subtle – overstepping the line by a foot is not something that will happen accidentally at that level of cricket (and is unlikely even on the village green) – and some of the commentary team made statements that suggested something might be amiss, but without stating any clear accusations (as of course they couldn’t, without proof).

The story broke, ruining the entire series as the players, predictably, denied everything.  It rumbled on, and eventually the Crown Prosecution Service charged them.  They were all banned by the International Cricket Council pending resolution of the case.   The court proceedings have just finished in London and all three have been found guilty – it transpired that one of them, the youngest, a mere 18 years old at the time of the match, and an exceptionally talented fast bowler, had admitted to the offence before the trial started.  All three now face jail terms, their careers over.

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In a sense, it’s a disappointing ending to the affair, as the only people involved who have been caught and punished are the three players, and the agent, who it turns out pleaded guilty before the trial commenced and in so doing implicated a number of other players in the Pakistan team as well as in others.  The syndicate that bought them remains intact (and unknown).

The hope is that, by imposing a strong sentence on them a warning will be sent to other cricketers (or indeed other sportsmen) that if you get mixed up in this sort of thing and get caught, you will be hammered by the law and your career ruined.   But I’m not so sure that will happen – ten years ago, South Africa’s cricket captain Hansie Cronje owned up to match fixing, but without implicating other players specifically (although stating the practice was widespread).  He was of course banned from all forms of cricket for life but escaped a jail term.   He ended up topping himself, his life in ruins.    If an example like that failed to curb the involvement of players in match fixing then frankly I can’t see that banging up three Pakistanis in Brixton nick (or wherever) for a few years is going to make much difference either.

No-one knows still how widespread this issue is, and the ICC’s Anti Corruption Unit (charged with investigating all accusations of match or spot fixing and basically breaking the syndicates) is pathetically under-funded and under-resourced and seems to be making no real progress.   Pakistan’s cricket authorities, beyond making statements about how these players have disgraced not only cricket but the country itself, do not seem to be doing a lot about solving the problems either.  Nor does the country’s government.  Not, for that matter, any other government , beyond the UK, which at least brought this case to a successful conclusion and has three brand new prisoners to show for its efforts.

The problem, of course, is where to start, when the leading syndicate members are still largely unknown or protected.    There are such vast sums washing around that players will always be tempted to take the money in return for a simple dropped catch, especially those from the more impoverished nations, like Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and even India.  But no country and no player is immune from the temptation – there have been statements implicating Australian cricketers as well.  Perhaps legalizing betting in the sub continent, moving it out of the underworld and legislating and controlling it, might be a start, but my feeling is that it will make little difference – the big money will still remain in the control of the spot fixers who will continue to find ways of operating outside the law of the land.   Paying the players more is unlikely to make a huge difference either, at least at the top of the game – they are all richly rewarded in any case, not only contractually by cricket’s governing bodies but from lucrative advertising endorsements too – but there will still be those who want more and are prepared to run the risks for it.  It’s human nature, I’m afraid.

The cricketing authorities certainly need to do more to address the problem.   Look in any commentary box at any test match anywhere in the world, and you will find teams of people, ex-players, with years of experience at the highest levels of the game, watching and commentating on the play.  They see things that do not look right that might be missed by the average punter, and could be a valuable first line of defence if proper reporting lines and, more importantly, follow up on their suspicions were put in place.  But this seems not to be the case: one of the BBC’s leading commentators has stated that he reported the three no-balls in the Pakistan case at the time to the ICC Anti Corruption Unit as being suspicious, but never even received a call back as acknowledgement, never mind a request for further information.    Which is disgraceful really.

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I used to play cricket, as I’ve written on here before.  Not to a particularly high standard, admittedly, but it has given me some kind of an insight into all this. 

We used to play on village greens, very picturesque, some of them, with an old churchyard on one boundary, the village pub on another boundary, maybe the village shop or school there too.  The games were always competitive, but also fun – win, lose or draw you enjoyed it and the after match socializing perhaps more than the match itself.

But the thing is, we always played to win.  The idea of throwing away our wicket, or deliberately dropping a simple catch, or overstepping on purpose just did not exist.  It was cheating.  Pure and simple.  We paid good money to play this lovely, quintessentially English game, and most of us probably would love to have been good enough for it to be the other way around and be paid to play.    Most of us were upset when Australian tycoon Kerry Packer bought the best players in the world and created his own World Series Cricket – mercenaries, we cried, only in it for the money!  Which was true, actually, but when you looked at the money some of the best players in the world were being paid by their counties it was understandable.  Here were players respected the world over whose contracts only covered the summer months, and who were therefore unemployed during the winter months (unless of course they were selected for overseas tours, but even that did not compensate financially for several months with no real income).  They were family men, with mortgages to pay and children to support who were earning not a lot more than I was.  There was no sponsorship in those days to supplement the income, and the after-dinner speaker circuit still its infancy.  So Packer’s offer was quite naturally tempting to any player and no surprise that so many players signed on the dotted line.   Now if any players could be expected to succumb to the idea of match fixing for money, it was these guys – but it just didn’t happen.  First and foremost they were sportsmen – poorly paid, perhaps, but sportsmen nevertheless and the idea of cheating for money wasn’t there – at least as far as this rose tinted spectacled observer is concerned.

But the Packer era brought about a sea change.  More money came into the game, in match sponsorship and eventually individual player sponsorship.  Ultimately it led to the lavishly rewarded players of today.  And this is why I find it impossible to understand the behavior of these three Pakistani players.  I can accept (or at least understand) the greed in any individual in seeking a quick and easy buck, but I just cannot understand why someone would be prepared to cheat in this way to do so.  It’s not only letting down your teammates or your club or country or whatever, but it’s letting down the entire sport and all its followers and all it has stood for down the years.  It’s a betrayal of every six or seven year old, playing in the back garden with his first cricket set and his doting parent.  It’s a betrayal of every old pro, retired at 40, to a postman’s life or whatever.   

There is no excuse for it.   And these three greedy men make me sick.