Sending cricket for a six

There8217;s a dark cloud looming over international cricket and it has nothing to do with weather conditions. Ironically, the very success of the game seems to be its undoing. As cricket grew in stature, delighting millions around the world and bringing rich rewards to players and national cricket boards alike, a betting and match-fixing mafia seems to have dug its heels firmly into the game. Many suspected the unholy influence these syndicates had begun to exercise on cricket, but the picture was fuzzy. True, underworld elements based in Dubai and Sharjah seemed to be taking an unusually keen interest in the game. True, some cricketers didn8217;t seem to be playing straight. True, some mediamen seemed to be receiving an inordinate number of calls on their cellphones while matches were in progress. But it still didn8217;t add to much.

The recent revelations, first from Pakistan where a full-blown inquiry was going on, and then from Shane Warne and Mark Waugh, who confessed to having accepted something like Aus 11,000between them from an Indian bookie to part with seemingly innocuous information on weather and playing conditions during a Colombo tournament in 1994, indicate that the criminalisation of the game has gone much further than has been acknowledged thus far. When Wisden editor, Mathew Engel, observed that this is the biggest scandal since Bodyline, he was not exaggerating. In fact, it could well be bigger, cutting as it does across all national boundaries. The confessions from Down Under have put paid to attempts by some to paint match-fixing and bribe-taking as a peculiarly subcontinental phenomenon. In fact, things would never have come to this pass if cricket administrators in the various nations that play the game, as well as the International Cricket Council, had showed more readiness to confront the problem rather than employ long brooms to sweep it under large carpets.

So anxious were they to keep the game going and the tills ringing, that if international cricket today suffers from a credibility gap aslarge as The Oval, they have only themselves to blame.

Since some soul-searching is in order, perhaps it8217;s time to look at this country8217;s record. The first whiff of scandal emerged here when an Indian journalist went public with information that he had been approached by a bookie anxious to make contact with players. Shortly thereafter, cricketer Manoj Prabhakar wrote a signed piece in a newsmagazine revealing that one of his teammates had approached him to throw a match. The Board of Control for Cricket in India decided to step in at that juncture. Not, it appears in hindsight, to set things right, but to do some quick damage control. While it sued the magazine and the cricketer for the allegations, it instituted an 8220;inquiry8221; into the whole affair. After several sittings with numerous players, the one-man inquiry committee issued a clean chit to Indian cricket. A happy ending. Or is it? If former New Zealand fast bowler Danny Morrison8217;s revelations about an Indian player having offered him money are tobe believed, such exoneration is highly premature. Cover-ups are convenient devices, but they can never administer the corrective that Indian cricket sorely needs. And, ultimately, it8217;s cricket that will have to pay the cost, as the jeers that greeted Mark Waugh at Adelaide on Friday indicated.