When the proud founder of England’s unique Barmy Army confessed that only two per cent of its members watched international One-day matches because they feared some form of fixing, it left me in no doubt that cricket corruption around the world had hit a new low.
These are loyal and knowledgeable supporters who spend a fortune to travel thousands of miles to attend a major cricket contest, yet it is only now that they have divulged that extreme care is taken about where to go and what to watch. Not because of the teams who are taking part, but because their trust and confidence in the integrity of One-day tournaments have been shattered, especially in Twenty/20 competitions.
It is a sad fact that no one can be absolutely sure any longer whether a dropped catch in the outfield was a bad piece of misjudgement or a deliberate mistake to fulfil a bribe with a bookmaker. Or a chaotic run-out, a first-ball duck, a wide in the opening over, a no-ball in a batting powerplay…
Spot-fixing and blatant cheating have become a menace in modern cricket to such an extent that I witnessed it personally during a Saturday afternoon club match when a bowler asked me to conceal the metal bottle-top that he was using to damage the ball to make it swing more because he feared the umpire had spotted it in his hand, glinting in the sunshine.
Financial greed has replaced in abundance the honesty that once made cricket such an honourable game. During my extensive investigations and collating of information for this book, it became worryingly clear that cheating and corruption are not confined to one country in particular, as many would like us to believe. I discovered that just about every international cricket nation at one time or another has experienced cheating of some kind.
Too many of the game’s head-in-the-sand leaders have made absurd claims that players who cheat in cricket do so because they are badly paid and want to boost their income to match that of team-mates around them. Truth is, some of the worst culprits have been world superstars on vast fees, endorsements and sponsorships who have found it impossible to curb their insatiable financial greed.
It has now reached that woeful stage where no one can be shocked any longer by reports that any player or official, no matter how big in the game, has been caught providing ‘inside’ information and taking bribes from bookmakers.
Personally, I have very little faith in most of the boards of control at the head of the main cricket-playing nations to expose and stamp out corruption, which is their responsibility, and I find it depressing that the International Cricket Council, the game’s governing body, is so impotent when it comes to locating and punishing properly the guilty fixers.
Enormous gratitude must be extended to those investigative reporters at the News of the World and at other newspapers, and to those television camera operators who spot and report players illegally tampering with the ball, who misguidedly think that they are safe from detection. Big Brother is definitely watching!
As a passionate lover of cricket at all levels – the greatest sport ever devised – I have found it hard while writing this book to believe and accept that the game has been bedevilled by so many devious people who masquerade as righteous yet are crooks who make a laughing stock out of paying customers, as they voraciously fill their pockets with dirty money. That is the biggest scandal of all…
Shortly before I completed this book, three Pakistan players had each been banned for five years by an ICC tribunal panel that had found them guilty of spot-fixing for a bookmaker in a betting scam during a Test match against England.
There was an outcry from many of the game’s top players, officials and parts of the media, all claiming that the ICC had allowed the disgraced trio to escape lightly. A ‘slap on the wrist’ was what they called it. The more extreme believed that all three should have been banned for life.
I was more concerned that, but for the skills of a Sunday tabloid, the ICC would not have had the opportunity to impose punishment of any kind, and it left me desperately hoping that the Anti-corruption Unit will now do its job better in future and root out and name the guilty itself, rather than leave this crucial job for journalists to do.