Back the whistle blower

"The whistle blower in sport has to be a brave man. He puts his finger on colleagues he has played with for years, so becomes the team pariah, an outcast who cannot be trusted," writes Suresh Menon on ESPNStar. "Yet, if the evil of match-fixing and all its cousins, including spot-fixing, is to be eliminated from cricket, then players who notice things out of the ordinary must be encouraged to report them."

Players are not dumb; they usually have a shrewd idea who is pulling his weight in the team and who is not. Years after Mohammad Azharuddin was implicated in the scandal, a player told me: "I knew there was something funny going on, but I had no idea what." His response was to withdraw deeper into himself and not ask embarrassing questions.

That is why when a player does speak up, it must be seen not as ratting on teammates but serving the higher cause of the sport. This means that he should be guaranteed the support of his captain, his officials and the media. The captain and the officials follow protocol, the former passing on the matter to the latter, but the media are out of anybody's control.