MATCH-FIXING

So Far, So Bad

The most distressing aspect of cricket’s corruption crisis, it was generally agreed after the first allegations were made about a fortnight ago, was that it threw the integrity of every international match into doubt. As this was regarded as such a depressing development, one wonders why it has become such a media sport to do so.

On Thursday 20 April 2000, the Australian ran on its front page what was promoted as an interview with UCBSA chief executive Ali Bacher in which a string of allegations were made: that two World Cup matches last year had been fixed, that doubts had been raised about ‘more than one umpire’, and that one international team was ‘throwing and manipulating matches’. Writer Malcolm Conn reported that Bacher ‘declined to be more specific’, but proceeded to be so on his behalf, citing Pakistan’s World Cup defeat by Bangladesh as ‘the match that raised most concern’, and Javed Akhtar’s officiation in South Africa’s deciding Test against England twenty months ago as ‘the umpiring that has raised most eyebrows’.

The story was picked up round the world, and repackaged as though the match and incident specified had emanated from Bacher himself, forcing the administrator to issue a clarifying statement. But this was not the only example, since the crisis began, of conjecture being made concrete: ‘questions’ have been raised over England’s recent Test win at Centurion Park, over England’s defeat by New Zealand at Old Trafford last year, and over any number of games in Sharjah. Three ‘famous’ English Testmen have been accused by former team-mate Chris Lewis in the News of the World of accepting cash from bookies. Other reports suggest that India’s Mohammed Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja will shortly be in the firing line.

Perhaps all these speculations have foundation. But perhaps they do not. Pardon such a ‘naïve and stupid’ observation, but I had always imagined cricket’s unpredictability to be part of its charm. I had also thought it generally accepted that umpires occasionally erred, and that players did not always perform at their peaks. Unfortunately, we are now moving in a realm where rumour and fact have become all but indistinguishable.

Where does this process cease? Bangladesh’s defeat of Pakistan was a turn-up for the books, and perhaps also for the bookies, but so was Zimbabwe’s thrashing of South Africa a couple of days earlier. And surely no result was so bizarre as that in the preceding World Cup when Kenya mauled the mighty West Indies. How long before a crusading journalist casts doubts on the courageous Kenyans’ proudest cricketing day?

Javed Akhtar’s familiarity with the LBW law did seem remote at Headingley in August 1998, but it impacted on both teams, and by far the most influential decision in the series had occurred in the Trent Bridge Test a week earlier: the reprieve granted match-winner Mike Atherton, then 27 going on 98 not out, from an appeal for a catch at the wicket. If you’re searching for umpiring that ‘raises eyebrows’, meanwhile, what of Sachin Tendulkar’s recent run of luck with our own officials? A few Indian punters would have been looking for tall buildings to jump off after that LBW in Adelaide, don’t you think?

You see, it’s the simplest thing in the world to raise ‘questions’ by inverting the burden of proof, implying guilt through rumour and hearsay, then leaving it to the injured party to establish his innocence. For innocence frequently relies on nothing more than an individual’s word and, in an age where the vogue is for cheap cynicism, that counts for little.

This climate of reckless allegation and imputation, however, endangers cricket’s good name as much as Hansie Cronje may or may not have. If everything unusual, unforeseen, unworthy and even incompetent is to be deemed suspicious, cricket faces extinction sooner rather than later.

Wisden Online April 2000