Where are the life bans?
Robert Craddock in the Courier-Mail wonders, in the aftermath of the Pakistan trio being handed bans ranging from five to ten years, what a player would have to do to earn a life ban.
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
Robert Craddock in the Courier-Mail wonders, in the aftermath of the Pakistan trio being handed bans ranging from five to ten years, what a player would have to do to earn a life ban.
Would you have to perform a Hannibal Lecter and eat a rival's liver with "fava beans and a nice chianti"? Hannibal would have been an even-money chance of getting a suspended sentence (perhaps losing 10 per cent of his match fee) had he been put on trial by the International Cricket Council.
Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald argues that a sense of proportion needs to be retained.
The response to the infractions of sportsmen is out of proportion and smacks of hypocrisy. It's as if sport was treated as a separate world, a legendary place populated by heroes and villains. In fact it is merely part of the wider world.
And in the Australian, Malcolm Conn wonders why it took a tabloid newspaper to uncover the scandal when the ICC has its own anti-corruption body.
A strong and decisive punishment was vital against players so obviously guilty of corruption. Anything less would have completely gutted an already grubby and poorly administered game made more vulnerable by the riches of the IPL. Are the ICC and its organs capable of protecting it? The answer appears to be, without the News of The World, no.
Brydon Coverdale is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets here