Oh Lordy. Oh dear me no. Every cricket fan in the world must this morning be sharing in a collective sickness, numbness and disbelief as The News of The World revealed details of a sting which has implicated members of the young Pakistan team in a cash-for-no-balls betting scam.
The sleazy red top alleges that top Pakistani players took a bung amounting to £150,000 in return for bowling three no-balls at predetermined times during the match.
Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif, it is claimed, deliberately over-stepped the popping crease in their delivery stride as part of a conspiracy to defraud bookmakers. One man has been arrested, and key members of the Pakistan team have already been subject to police interview.
- Mohammad Amir in happier times
This is the last thing cricket needed. Test attendances are plummeting, seeing the most prestigious and dramatic form of the game played in front of half empty stadiums. Inevitably this has led to an investigation into fixture congestion, amid claims of cricket overkill that has seen a dip in interest in one day forms of the game. Even cricket’s current golden goose stuffed cash cow, the crash bang, firework display of Twenty20 cricket, is seeing a slump. For the first time domestic Twenty20 matches are playing to less than full houses.
Cricket then, is at a crucial point in its modern history, in a potentially unprecentented period of flux and re-evaluation. The game could well have done without this slur on it’s much cherished and envied character and integrity.
This is the last thing Pakistani cricket and the PCB needed. A team in exile, Pakistan are in the unfavourable position of having to play every match as the guest of another country. As a result of political instability and civil unrest, the Pakistan team are currently living on goodwill and favours. How many test playing countries will wish to play host to this tarnished team now? How many Pakistan fans will continue to turn out to support a team that has let them down again?
Pakistan Cricket is only just emerging from a turbulent time which saw indefinite bans for Mohammad Yousuf and Younus Khan, and lengthy bans and fines for several other big name squad members. The Pakistani players were reprimanded after a terrible tour of Australia where infighting and internal politics were thought to be dragging the team performance down.
Add this to Pakistani icon Shahid Afridi’s frequent above-the-law nonsense and Pakistan cricket was clearly in a state.
However, the PCB had acted swiftly and decisively, and Pakistan were in the process of blooding a young and impressive squad, with the 18 year old pace bowler Mohammad Amir among the finest of the prospects. This latest shameful debacle, in which Amir finds himself a central player, has undone all the PCB’s good work and the reputation of the national cricket team can be considered in worse shape than ever.
Moreover, the Lords Test no ball scandal is something that the troubled nation of Pakistan could easily have done without. I had read on various forums earlier in the week, as Amir’s swing bowling devastated England’s batting, that the performance of the Pakistan team was going some way to cheering a nation brought to its knees by floods and the ensuing chaos. Pakistan’s proud and battling performances were helping to lift spirits. You can only guess at how cheated and baffled those people feel now.
Dependent on kindness and aid to survive, it must appear to the stricken people of Pakistan that their cricketers have sold them out to line their own pockets.
It is worth mentioning that this is not the sort of match fixing which led to the disgrace of the late South African captain Hansie Cronje, but the rather smaller fry of spot fixing, where arrangements are made so that a large bet on a tiny aspect of a match is guaranteed to pay off.
- Broad and Trott's marathon partnership will be sadly overshadowed
The allegations state that Amir and Asif bowled a couple of no balls to order. Not so bad you might think.
Consider though that Amir was bowling like a man with an enchanted arm on the Thursday and Friday in question. Any one of his deliveries could have been a crucial wicket that might have changed the whole match, disrupting a fledgling England partnership or even interrupting Jonathan Trott and Stuart Broad’s historic and record breaking, match-winning stand.
The problem is that the integrity of the sport is brought into question. If a no ball or a wide can be bought, then how can spectators trust any part of what they are seeing on the field? If supporters lose faith in the sport and stop showing up then this ancient and beautiful game is as good as toast.
If even a whiff of corruption can poison a sport like cricket, built on values of fair play and gentlemanliness, then explicit cheating and avarice of the sort we are talking about will take a very long time to shake off.
Of course, these are just allegations at this stage, but the fact of decisive police action and the sombre, heavy-headed mood during today’s play seems to suggest that this is a stain that cricket will be struggling to scrub off for many years to come.
