Cricket in a fixIn its long history, the game of cricket has not received a harder blow than yesterday's suspension of South Africa's cricket captain, Hansie Cronje, for being involved in match-fixing. The precise extent of his involvement is not yet clear. India's police have charged him and three of his team mates with ``cheating, fraud and criminal conspiracy related to match-fixing and betting.''Dr Ali Bacher, the managing director of South Africa's United Cricket Board, says only that Cronje accepted $10-15,000 from a local South African and Indian bookmaker based in London during the triangular home series with Zimbabwe and England in January. This according to Dr Bacher, was for ``providing information and forecasting''. Wherever the full truth may lie, the admission of South Africa's captain that he has not been ``entirely honest'' in his denials of match-fixing puts cricket in the mud.For this is by no means an isolated episode. The taint of corruption has been hovering over the game for some time. In the mid-1990s Australia was caught up in it. The captain, Mark Taylor, told a Pakistan judicial inquiry convened in 1998 that his team had been offered money to ``bowl badly''. Imran Khan, a former captain of Pakistan, told the inquiry that his knowledge of match-fixing went back nearly two decades. Shane Warne, recently named by Wisden as one of the five great cricketers of this century, reported an offer of money to bowl poorly in the first Test against Pakistan in 1994-95 and so ensure a drawn match.The downfall of Cronje now represents a wider tragedy. His country, not long emerged from the isolation imposed on South Africa because of apartheid, has won back a place among the giants of international cricket. Some predicted that after years outside that forum, South Africa's sport would languish. Both on the cricket and the rugby fields, the opposite has proved to be the case. It has also sorry implications for India and Pakistan, both established international competitors in the cricket field. On the evidence so far available on match-fixing, the accusing fingers points in that direction. However unfairly, seeds of mistrust have been sown.Editorial comment in `The Daily Telegraph', April 12Cricket's ultimate testWhat was Hansie Cronje thinking of? This is an intelligent man, for goodness sake, perfectly capable not only of assessing the potential damage his actions would do to his reputation and indeed his career but of seeing the wider issue. Ever since he took over the captaincy of South Africa he has been a dream of a role model for young crickets and not only those from his own land. Boys looked up to him and aspired. Now that is all dust in the wind and cricket has become a game for cheats and charlatans, a catalogue of fixes and fiddles in which it is so easy to miss a straight ball, or butterfinger a dolly catch, or bowl a hittable long-hop that there is no limit to the possibilities for taking advantage of the subcontinental craze for cricket betting.No one trusts anyone else on the field of play these days anyway and now, thanks to Cronje, the same will apply off it, even within the same team. Little surprise, then if the next generation feels like turning its back on cricket and trying something a little less contrived: professional wrestling, say.Excerpted from a piece entitled `Cricket's ultimate test' by Mike Selvey, `The Guardian, April 15
