An ironic history lesson at Lord’s

Last week while on vacation in the United Kingdom, I took a train ride to London for the purpose of seeing the “Swinging Away” exhibit that is wrapping up at the MCC Museum at Lord’s. The display features artefacts from both baseball and cricket and analyses the history of each game.

There are pictures of Babe Ruth padding up in cricket gear to have a hit in the nets, displays of mannequins dressed up in wicketkeeper’s and catcher’s gear side-by-side, as well as buried treasures from the history of both games, such as the oldest cricket bat in existence and the bat used by Ruth to hit his final home run.

However, there was one thing in particular that caught my attention more than anything else being showcased on the second floor of the museum. It was located just a few steps away from a layout of American cricket legend, John Barton King, in a section devoted to the Gentlemen of Philadelphia.

Where two walls meet, a quote is prominently displayed that is attributed to Isaac Sharpless, who in the late 1880s was the president of Haverford College, a place steeped in American cricket history. The quote reads, “The noble game of baseball l… has degenerated into a victim of gamblers and a trysting-place for all kinds of immorality… cricket alone seems to remain on the high ground.”

Close to a century after baseball’s 1919 Black Sox scandal, the spot-fixing case of Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt is due to be heard next month in Doha, Qatar. It appears that the shoe is now firmly on the other foot.

While it’s true that baseball was given a black eye by rampant steroid use in the 1990s and early 2000s, fans seem willing to forgive a player for failing a drug test much more easily than they are to someone who is fixing results of games. Former 1980 National League Rookie of the Year Steve Howe was comically suspended seven times over the course of his career in major league baseball for various instances of substance abuse. On the flip side, baseball’s all-time hits leader Pete Rose was found to have bet on the game, including games he managed, and in 1989 he was banned for life.

Some fans have tried to argue that it might have been okay for Rose to bet on his Cincinnati Reds teams to win, but that betting on them to lose would have been a heinous offense worthy of his lifetime ban. In a sense, that is somewhat similar to people trying to justify leniency for Amir. Organising a no-ball here or there isn’t trying to lose, it’s just one delivery. Baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti didn’t see the rosy side of Rose betting on baseball. It remains to be seen how the ICC Anti-Corruption Tribunal interprets the scope of treachery for the three Pakistani players in question.

A more accurate comparison in American sports terms to the alleged spot-fixing sins is the point-shaving scandals that have rocked both college basketball and college football over the course of time.

The concept is similar in the fact that it requires an organised scheme to alter one aspect of a game without necessarily influencing the overall result. For example, in college basketball a powerhouse team may be favoured to beat its small-school opponent by 20 points. If the powerhouse team is up by 18 points with two minutes to go, a player on that team involved in a point-shaving scheme might take an ill-advised shot with the intention of missing the basket or throw a pass behind his team-mate on purpose to cause a turnover in order to make sure that the margin of victory remains under the point spread. If the favoured team doesn’t cover the spread, the bookie organising the scheme can cash in.

A famous instance of this involved City College of New York’s basketball team in 1951. The previous year, CCNY won both the NCAA and the NIT postseason championships. But a year later, three of their players were exposed for their involvement in a point-shaving ring that included 32 players from a total of seven college teams. The players were linked to payments from New York City mobsters and the district attorney on the case filed charges against the players for fixing a total of 86 games.

One of the arguments over why Amir allegedly fell prey to spot-fixing is because Pakistani players make peanuts compared to players with retainer contracts from England or Australia. Similarly, college athletes in the USA are easy targets to accept cash for a multitude of reasons because they are exploited by the NCAA for billions of dollars in television revenue yet are limited to a university scholarship for remuneration compared to the millions earned by professionals in the same line of work. He wasn’t involved in point-shaving or fixing games, but the case of former USC running back Reggie Bush receiving cash and other improper benefits during his 2005 Heisman Trophy season is still fresh in everyone’s minds in America.

In “Eight Men Out” author Eliot Asinof wrote how one of the major sources of motivation for the Black Sox to fix the 1919 World Series was because they wanted to get back at their notoriously cheap owner, Charles Comiskey, after feeling that they were severely underpaid for years. However, any sympathy they might have held from fans for being underpaid faded away as soon as word came out that they fixed the World Series.

Through history, many American sports have found a way to walk again after scandals that could have left them crippled forever. Cricket found its way off the mat after Bodyline and again after the Hansie Cronje affair. After the hearing is through in Doha next month, cricket fans will be hoping that this noble game can find its feet again in Pakistan as well.