Cricket8217;s notional

I8217;ve been reading social histories of 18th and 19th century Britain and her colonies and I now know that more than one incident of bloodletting began on a cricket pitch. I8217;ve even read about gasp matches being thrown for money on the village greens of Yorkshire, where cash counts for everything and the men are far from gentle. Or so I8217;m told.

Put quite simply, sport becomes potentially corrupt when money is involved. It is pure sport so long as it is played for fun, or to pass the time. Once players get salaries, they become employees of men making even larger sums of money club-owners, promoters, sponsors and, yes, bookies.

I once met an Australian bar-room pundit who described man as quot;the gambling apequot;. Never mind our use of language, tools, or even technology, my dri-nking companion said, we as a species began to think like humans when two ea-rly primates first bet a banana on which bird would chirp next, or which rutting male elephant would win the female in heat.

A trifle exaggerated for effect, perhaps, but point taken. Gambling is a universal yet deeply irrational, exclusively human pastime. A friend of mine in Canada used to describe lotteries as quot;a tax on stupidityquot;, even as we bought tickets on that week8217;s jackpot. We know, only too well, that gambling is a waste of money, yet we have a flutter and fling good money after bad in search of the easy score.

Money that we win in lotteries or, I dare say, at the bookmaker8217;s makes us feel better than a fortune earned th-rough hard work. But I digress. The central que-stion is: can the cricketing world really be so naive as to deny that the rot and corruption at the heart of their beloved sport hasn8217;t been obvious for years? And amongst those rending thinning hair and tearing their clothes, I bet sorry that more than one has had a flutter on a match in Sharjah or some other place where money is the object, not cricket.

So why then are we subjected to the hyperbolic and hypocritical spectacle of men in the global collective of cricket countries bemoaning the loss of some notional innocence in the game? Well, one key word in that question is men.

They8217;re all men, these wailing Cassandras. For an expert opinion on the male species, I usually turn to my wife. And she, great guru that she is, rarely lets me down.

quot;You8217;re not men at all, you lot,quot; she sneered when I put the cricket question to her, quot;you8217;re boys. You8217;ve never gro-wn up. You still have that boys8217; dream of being the champion this, or the much-loved captain of that. So drink your beer and imagine that you8217;re Cronje or Tendulkar and you think they8217;re as innocent and naive as you believe yourselves to be.quot; She finished with a sniff of contempt well honed thro-ugh years of exposure to me and my various boyish ambitions pilot, expl-orer, Hemingway-esque author and so on.

But she8217;s right. It8217;s the boy in us that feels betrayed by Hansie Cronje8217;s mobile telephone calls. Not the man, he knows perfectly well that at the nub of it all is cold and hard cash, not the ethereal thwack of willow on leather, the roar of the crowd, etc, etc. Perhaps, being a North American, it8217;s easier for me. Our sporting heroes lost what passed for innocence long ago.

In 1919, the Chicago White Sox ba-seball team won and then had to forfeit the championship because at least seven of the players were found to be gambling on the outcome. That episode, known as the Black Sox scandal, has inspired books, movies, scholarly treatises and more than a little blase cynicism about the role of money in sport. Not so long ago, the greatest baseball player of modern times, Pete Rose, was barred for life and disallowed from the Hall of Fame for his close contacts with a bookie.

He was as guilty as the vicar with his trousers down. Rose admitted his guilt, although cloaking his confession in nebulous New Age nonsense about addictive behaviour and sociological disorders. In other words, he wasn8217;t entirely responsible for himself. He was banned nonetheless. Now, pressure from adoring fans is growing, ten years on, to forgive Pete Rose and accord him the honour in retirement that his matchless play deserves. There8217;ll always be an asterisk beside his name to remind us of his bad habits, but we, the people, think it8217;a time to let bygones be bygones.

I hope this Hansie Cronje business comes to a similar conclusion, but it8217;ll take vast quantities of honesty and an end to global denial by the men and grown-up boys who live vicariously through the exploits of highly paid gladiators with swollen egos and God-given talents. The short-term prognosis isn8217;t good, I have to say. Self-deception and cricket have gone together for too long. A good start would be an admission that many have sinned, and some may have to be punished, but that few involved in cricket are completely free of the taint of big money.

Someone might even consider asking the fans what they think at some point, rather than bleating co-mmentators, sports journalists and cricket bureaucrats. Clearly illegal gambling and fraud will have to be brought under control. In their inadvertent fingering of Cronje8217;s collar, Delhi8217;s finest, so often reviled as the Keystone Kops of the East, may just have given international cricket a push in the right direction. But I8217;ll believe it when I see it.

The writer is BBC correspondent in India