T Cozier: The Ugly Truth (16 Sep 1998)

16 September 1998

The Ugly Truth

by Tony Cozier

The smoke has been billowing for some time now with no signs of abating. Confirmation that its source was a raging fire finally came last week through the Pakistan Cricket Boards independent commission report that charged three of their most prominent players of match-fixing and bribery and recommended their suspension.

Not everyone was as surprised as certain Pakistan administrators feigned to be and no one believes that Salim Malik, Wasim Akram and Ijaz Ahmed will eventually found to be the only ones involved.

The Australians, Tim May and Shane Warne, first pointed fingers at Malik two years ago. Since then a host of others, mostly within the Pakistan team itself, have taken up the theme.

Among them was Aamir Sohail who was actually banned for three months and fined 50 000 rupees for making the very same allegations the judicial commission have now made.

It is a mesmerising turn of events, only explicable as it involves Pakistan cricket that the same Sohail was appointed captain last month and is now in Toronto for the annual Sahara Cup against India, leading a team including Malik and Ijaz.

Until now, and even in light of the recent revelations, the official Pakistani line has been denial.

It set up its own inquiry following the initial May-Warne allegations. That exonerated Malik.

As the talk persisted, it appointed it latest inquiry, under a retired high court judge which has now found that there were, indeed, players who fiddled results all along to the satisfaction of the illegal bookmakers in Bombay and Karachi, the manipulators of this whole scandal.

The most recent report represents a complete about-turn and puts an essential stamp of authority on a serious charge.

It cannot be further ignored by the International Cricket Council (ICC), the organisation that is there to both promote and protect the game globally.

The ICC is clearly now obligated to act as other international organisations do against such undermining of their sports integrity.

Its immediate move must be to establish an independent inquiry of its own to uncover just how deep the cancer has gone, then to identify those who have been involved and weed them out of the game.

The development is unfortunate but, human nature being what it is, not entirely surprising.

Wherever big money leads, big corruption follows and there is now serious big money in sport.

The consequent advent of the bookmakers whether illegal as in India and Pakistan or officially sanctioned as in England and Australia where they actually accept bets on the grounds has merely served to accentuate the situation.

Drugs have become the most conspicuous method of fixing the results.

But goalkeepers who deliberately let balls slip through their grasp, jockeys who restrain their mounts just enough to lose and cricketers who run out their partners or bowl the opposite side of the wicket to the field set for them are the same by whatever name they are called.

They all subvert the very purpose of sport and prompt cynicism among the millions to whom it is a passion.

Long before and ever since Ben Johnson was found out at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, few track champions cross the line without the misgiving that some chemical cocktail has boosted their speed and stamina.

Our minds will now drift back to a host of Pakistani batting collapses and missed catches and wonder whether they were genuine or whether they were conditioned by the promise of a sizeable payday from the shady characters who fix the odds. Inevitably, everyone else is tainted by such chicanery.

What really was behind Indias dramatic demise in the Kensington Test last year? Or the West Indies staggering defeat in the 1996 World Cup semifinal? Or Australias one-wicket defeat by Pakistan in 1994 in the very Test that May and Warne claimed Malik offered his sizeable bribe.

And so on, ad infinitum.

Those who run the game must appreciate just where this sorry business can lead. Its their responsibility to do something about it.

Source :: The Barbados Nation (https://www.nationnews.com/)