Re: Arrest Over Cricket ‘Match-Fixing’ At Lords
BOWLED OVER - Mohammad Amir has made fools of us, says Richie Benaud
**
SAD DAY FOR MY GAME**
IN 52 years of being involved in cricket, nothing has distressed me more than the revelations in today’s News of the World.
To watch the videos and read the transcripts from Mazher Mahmood’s investigation brought back appalling memories of the Hansie Cronje match-fixing affair which brought cricket to its knees a decade ago.
Sadly, the people who now taint a great sport have become far more sophisticated in their ability to make dirty money out of the game.
Recently Lord Condon, the outgoing head of world cricket’s corruption investigation unit, said it was the easiest sport to fix.
I hoped against hope he was wrong, but secretly I feared that the examples he gave might well be true. The shocking events at Lord’s this week prove that.
I was banking on the trustworthiness and integrity of the participants not to besmirch the game by taking money in return for cheating and the passing of information.
It turned out I was talking a load of nonsense. Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif have made fools of all of us.
What to do about it? Cricket’s investigators must work harder to ensure the game is clean.
But whether it can ever be completely clean is looking increasingly unlikely.
Originally, I was writing an article about Jonathan Trott and what a splendid player he has become since hitting that century on debut at the Oval in 2009.
Also Stuart Broad, who will be the next cricketer to do the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in Test cricket.
They will be in Australia in November defending the Ashes. But in the background there could be shadowy characters that don’t care about cricket or any other sport, merely about fixing the game to their own financial advantage.
What about the hundreds of thousands of people who love the game of cricket and who pay their money at the gate? And those who will be watching on television or listening to the radio?
What happens if a bowler runs up and bowls a ball which is correctly called ‘no-ball’ by the umpire?
Will fans turn to one another and raise their eyebrows or just shake their heads and think about walking out of the ground.
The ICC has a lot of work to do to restore confidence after this latest lousy bit of skullduggery.
They and the administrators in various countries must act fast, otherwise cricket is at real peril.
Will those punters and bookmakers care about that? I doubt it - there are other sports they can ruin for a bit of financial fun.
Courtesy: The News of the World
