ICC globalising match-fixing

I am writing this on the eve of ICC's emergency meeting on match-fixing. I consider myself to be on safe ground in anticipating what will emerge from this meeting. What will emerge will be a declaration of good intent and a pious condemnation of the skullduggery that seems to be going on in cricket. Nothing substantive, nothing concrete will emerge. The meeting was called by the ICC in panic as if match-fixing and links with bookies was some new, startling development. What the ICC meeting will do will be to deflect attention away from specifics, throw in the Hansie Cronje case in the general wash of dirty linen and the pressure will be off and people like Dr Ali Bacher will be able to breathe easier. Already he has turned a somersault and denied that he had targeted Javed Akhtar and claimed that the Pakistan Bangladesh World Cup match was fixed. Having held to his position defiantly, he is now trying to get out of the kitchen because he can't take the heat. He now says that the Australian newspaper to whom he had given an interview misquoted him. A good reporter, these days, conducts an interview with a taperecorder and it is for this Australian newspaper to defend its integrity or admit that it fabricated the quotes attributed to Dr Ali Bacher.

The impression being created is that cricket is facing its gravest crisis ever and that match-fixing carries the seeds of the game's destruction. This is a gross overreaction and it is not the cricket public but its administrators who are spreading gloom and doom. There is no field of human activity that is free of corruption of one sort or the other. Political elections are known to be rigged and when John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon, Nixon had openly claimed that the election had been "stolen" from him. There are countless instances of "insider trading." What is so sacred about sports and what is hallowed about cricket in particular that it should escape chicanery? Any given population will have its share of crooks. These crooks need to be weeded out and I really cannot see the ICC as having any role to play. The Indian Government has done well to hand the investigations to the CBI. This is what every cricket playing country should do, get the proper law-enforcing agencies to get into the act. In-house investigations by various cricket boards are worthless.

Without going into the morality of it, a punter who follows the horses knows that the sport is not clean. Horses are pulled or the owner will not try and despite stringent tests, doping goes on. But a punter still goes to the races, goes through the exercise of studying "form" and the sport is flourishing. If there can be match-fixing in cricket, as it appears there most certainly is, there must be match-fixing in other games as well. We really cannot abolish human nature.

What we can do is to save people from accusations unless these are backed up with proof. What is depressing about the present scenario is that in the general bedlam, a lot of personal scores are being settled. You have a cricketer who happily goes along playing under a particular captain but when he is dropped from the team, and only then, decides that he has troubled conscience and "comes clean." This too is a form of dishonesty.

It is being suggested that until the air is cleared, there should be a ban on one-day cricket as this version of cricket is being considered the root of all evils. This is to throw out the baby out with the bath water. Why is it imagined that Test matches are not or cannot be fixed? I have written against too much cricket, particularly against masala matches but not because they are more prone to fixing but because I fear the law of diminishing returns will set in and the cricket public will be turned off. Cricket was something I used to look forward to but there is so much of it that I don't watch it even though I am supposed to for professional reasons.

Despite all the furore about match-fixing, the cricket public in Pakistan watched the triangular series in the West Indies. When Pakistan won the first of the finals, I was asked whether Pakistan would wrap it up by winning the second of the finals. I said that I had an inkling that there would be a third final. This did not imply that any fixing was involved but that Pakistan had the reputation of resting on their oars and may not show the same killer-instinct. But if anything else was involved, then both teams and both boards were a party to it! And that would be match-fixing and there was no answer to that one. What I am trying to convey is that we should not lose sight of the bigger picture and there is certainly no need to panic. The ICC, instead of globalising cricket has succeeded in globalising match-fixing. In some convoluted way, they are guilty of bringing the game into disrepute. Those found guilty of corrupt practices should be punished, it goes without saying. But finding the guilty is the job of the police or an equivalent investigating agency. When a water-tap leaks in your house, you send for a plumber, not the chairman of the water-board.