ICC questionnaire to make cricketers social outcasts

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has worked out a format which if implemented in words and in spirit will reduce the cricketers to scheduled caste status as they will have to keep away from all worldly contacts and become unsocial animals.

The new format prepared by the ICC after its two-day deliberations in Nairobi (Kenya) seems to be a product of frustration in curbing the menace of match-fixing scandals which have emerged in the last decade.

The form which according to the ICC's notification has to be filled in by Nov 30, by all cricketers, umpires and officials will in their view help in eradicating the evil.

The form asks five questions, including whether they have ever taken part in or been asked to take part in "any arrangement with any other person involved in playing or administration of the game of cricket which might involve corruption in any form".

The questionnaire also asks whether they have taken part in, or been approached about the passing on of team selection, weather and details of the toss to any person other than to the media, performing below par, or perverting the normal outcome of a match.

All the five questions have most emphatically stressed the word "approached" which means that if anyone directly or indirectly associated with the game is approached by the unscrupulous elements he commits some sort of sin.

No country has ever patronised corruption in the form of match-fixing. It has always been condemned and will never be encouraged. All the cricket playing countries have been very rigorously trying to keep the game clean as far as possible.

The Australian action against Shane Warne and Mark Waugh for leaking out some information to bookmakers or the ban for life on Hansie Cronje after his admission of committing the offence or the ban on two other South African players - Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams plus the effort of the Pakistan Cricket Board in probing the match-fixing scandals were meant to highlight the concern of the cricket administrators of almost every cricket playing country.

One cannot, however, understand the panic which has crept in the ICC, the world's supreme cricketing body. The council with its head office in London is perhaps still living in the colonial age and wants to run the game on colonial lines which is not acceptable in this age and at this stage.

Cricket is played hardly by two dozen countries which proves its limitations. No doubt the game has gained tremendous popularity in the populous developing countries in Asia particularly the sub-continent. But it does not mean that people sitting in London should run the game as neo-imperialists.Football is the most popular game today as ever and has the biggest following in the world. It is run on professional lines. There is more money and prestige at stake in football than the cricket establishment can ever think of. Yet there are no corruption and match-fixing scandals. Such situations erupt in closed house establishments like the ICC and the IOC.

The International Olympic Committee was confronted with corruption scandals last year and some of its members had to be sacked because despite having representation of every country in the ICC, its closed circuit never allowed transparency. The result was that gradually corruption crept in and some strict remedial measures had to be taken to cleanse it.

Sportsmen are social birds. They have to meet their fans more freely and mix with people from all shades of life. Why cricketers should forego their right of free movement. If someone becomes a cricketer it does not mean that he should distance himself from social life.

When someone moves around and socialises, he is apt to come across people having good and bad intentions. If someone moves around in bad company only then one can raise his finger. This is the job of the National body as they are sovereign.

This is not the ICC headache. If they have any positive information they can pass it on to the concerned National cricket body but their desire to interfere in every country's internal affairs is by no stretch of imagination a right course.

Does the ICC want the cricketers to move around in Burqa (veils) so that no one can even recognise them and come in contact with them.

The Pakistan Cricket Board should take a very serious view of the new questionnaire issued by the ICC as it may be the first victim of the new order.

The Chairman of the Code of Conduct Commission, Lord Griffith has been asked by the ICC to collect further information about five Pakistani players - Wasim Akram, Mushtaq Ahmad, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Saeed Anwar and Waqar Younus - who were fined by the Qayyum report. The ICC it seems is not fully satisfied with the punishment awarded to the above five cricketers.

It is a fact that Pakistan conducted at least three inquiries in the match fixing scandals in Pakistan. The first one was conducted by Justice (retd) Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim, the second by the Accountability Bureau (headed by Mr Saifur Rehman and finally by Justice Qayyum).

For all practical purposes the chapter has been closed and no one can doubt the intentions of the Pakistan Cricket Board. The PCB should implement the new code of conduct but with reservations as it cannot go against the supreme interest of the game.

One gets the impression that Pakistan's representative at the ICC meeting did not present Pakistan's case properly and positively as the case of five Pakistani cricketers fined by Justice Qayyum is still wide open. Whatever the fate of the five may be, the cricketers definitely deserve better treatment by the ICC and they should not be treated as pariahs and outcasts.