Introduction
Cricket was originated in England and it has always been termed as “Gentleman’s game”. Apart from all other sports this is one sport where playing in true spirit of the game is considered to be of highest regards. In the modern era the game has been plagued by various spot fixing scandals. This has hampered the image of the game. Spot fixing most commonly has its roots in the illegal sports betting business. Bettors pay huge amount to the players participating in this hideous act. They make sure that the outcome of the game is in their favour and they offer huge amount of money which is hard to resist. Not only does it affects the player’s dignity but also leave a lot of loyal fans in disarray. In this paper I am going to discuss about what happens behind the scenes and how this spot fixing has scarred the image of the game. We often think about cricket as people walking out in white flannels, with smiles on their faces and a friendly banter on the pitch or walking out from the pavilion but there is a lot that happens behind the scenes.
Recent events of spot fixing
One of the issue which shook the cricketing world by surprise happened with the South African national team cricket captain Hansie Cronje. In April 2000 he pleaded guilty in to his cricket board that he fixed the match with a bookie and committed to play as per the instructions. He fixed the match and accepted gifts from bookies to alter the game results. He did that with one of the U.k. based businessman against a match in India in Nagpur. Four days after Delhi police charged Hansie with match fixing he confessed to Board Director that “he has been dishonest”. Hansie was a leader whom the whole nation admired and Cricket South Africa made a re-entry to cricket after Apartheid, Hansie was the hope of many followers to giving South Africa cricket a world recognition. This incident broke the heart of so many followers and still after confession they were not blaming him. That was the level of influence on Cricket South Africa. A perfect leader with a stupendous record and a humble guy. This was even beyond unethical considered the principles of the game. Further the cricket board investigated the test match against England which was forfeited by both the captains. This is purely unethical considered fans, the local followers of the game, principles of the game and a nation who was trying to build themselves in the cricket world (Espncricinfo, July 22, 2013).
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One of the other major incident which of spot fixing was committed by 3 Pakistani cricketers. Mohammad Asif, Mohammad Amir and Salman Butt were found guilty of spot fixing against a match against England at Lords, London in 2010. Willingly bowling the no balls which provided extra runs to the opposition teams. The fans of the game deserves true and fair display of the game. This issue was investigated by one of the British journalist who heard one of the Pakistani journalist boasting off his take on the game and promising the spot which was fixed and when it will happen. The incident happened at that very time when it was claimed by Pakistani journalist. This was unethical as it cheated the spectators who are passionately following their cricketing heroes. Cricket is the biggest sport in Pakistan, some communities even worship cricketers. Doing injustice to that kind of fan base is purely unethical. It brought out the rage and anger from all the people. Pakistan is the country which has been accused of match fixing more than any other country. There was uproar in the international arena after this incident as people started questioning the authenticity of the game. The players took money from Mazhar Majeed (the sting operator) for bowling pre planned no balls at certain time periods of the game. There were hidden camera videos aired on television recording this cruel act of fixing. The players alleged for being involved in spot fixing were handed punishing bans by the International Cricket Council. The captain Salman Butt was handed a ban of 10 years, Muhammad Asif a ban of 7 years while the youngster for being naive was handed only a 5 year ban from the game of cricket.
Their punishment for this totally unacceptable act did not finish just here. They faced criminal prosecution after the Crown Court determined there was evidence available for the players to be trailed. After several months Mohammad Amir accepted his crime while Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt chose to defend themselves in court. However after the trial was complete they were proved to be guilty. This day marked the darkest day for Pakistan’s cricket as the three Pakistani players were sentenced to imprisonment for varying periods. Mohammad Amir for accepting his crime was awarded a lesser punishment which was 6 months in a young offender’s jail while Mohammad Asif was sentenced for a year’s imprisonment. Salman Butt was handed the cruellest punishment of 30 months of imprisonment as he was leading the team (Dailymail, 2nd November, 2011).
Furthermore incidents has happened in Indian cricket too, when the captain Mohammad Azharudin, Manoj Prabhakar and Ajay Jadeja were found guilty of match fixing. There are many players in international cricket who reported that numerous times they were invited for after match parties in which they were approached by some bookies who tried to convince them for fixing the match. Young players nowadays are falling into this trap which is tarnishing the image of this great game. These acts are unethical as it misguides all the spectators and a nation’s image in the international sport. The trust of the people is lost in the results of the game. Most of the spectators have this notion in mind that if a close game happens, it must be fixed. International cricket council has to look into this matter seriously as they will not be able to promote cricket to other countries as they wish to.
Some reports suggest fixing has long been part of cricket and prior to the boom of online betting in 2000, Mumbai bookies controlled the odds and scripted segments of matches. It wasn’t until a few cricketers were caught that major finger pointing was done.
In 1994, players of Australia’s test cricket team made allegations that Pakistan’s captain Saleem Malik offered them bribes to fix a match. He was initially cleared. Two of the players making this claim Shane Warne and Mark Waugh were found to have some involvement in gambling themselves. They had sold information in 1994 to Indian bookmakers about pitch and weather conditions. Not yet a crime, the two were only fined and ICC added new rules to make this a much more serious offense going forward.
Impacts
Its impact on stakeholders which includes the other team members and spectators is devastating. It kills the authenticity of the game. The culprits go through extreme embarrassment and shame. Overcoming this kind of trauma is almost impossible for the players. Society never accepts them. They why do they it? What is so precious than one’s own self-respect? What could be the motivation behind this act? I will try to answer all these questions in the next paragraph.
When an Icon of the nation is found guilty of fixing the game it kills the game and its followers. Cricket being a national obsession in India, there is no denying the fact that there will be bookies involved in the game trying to make money out of it. The amount of money offered by these bookies is in millions of U.S. dollars cash which is very easy to lure the vulnerable and young players in. Most of the International cases of match fixing reported found bookies from India or Dubai. This was the reason that ICC has stopped cricket tournaments in Sharjah. Even the domestic cricket league is poisoned by this underworld match fixing. In Indian premier league three of the promising prospects for national team were lost due to spot fixing. People have lost trust in the game. They do not believe it’s true anymore. When the dark side of country’s favourite sport is revealed, it came as a shattering blow to many if its fans around the world.
South African players Herchelle Gibbs and Henry Williams were accused of being in touch with the bookmakers. And for Cronje he did not live long after that incident. He was killed in the plane crash that year. Memories of that time were not even faded away but then in 2001 some Indian players were penalised for tampering the cricket ball. These scenarios leaves an everlasting impact on the stakeholders.
Let’s start with the basics. What does a scandal look like? Who’s usually involved? How do these things unfold? Well, most plans will start with the bookmaker or anyone who might have inside information. These guys will approach teams, players, officials, or anyone else who can influence a match’s outcome. Why? Money. It’s almost always about making more money. You know the saying; everyone has a price. And that’s been proven time and time again to be true. All that matters to the bookie is that he can rig the game for cheaper than what he stands to win doing so. But sometimes, only sometimes. Cheating is about something other than money. For example, there have been many cases outside of cricket where players played soft or lost on purpose so to avoid facing a certain opponent later in a tournament bracket or playoff game. The criminal mafia that runs match-fixing and betting is also involved in other criminal activities in India. These are, by and large, the same people who are involved in narcotics trafficking, which a very big industry in India, far bigger than the cricket. Past experience shows that all these people have gotten away.
Illegal bookies throughout the Indian subcontinent, running informal operations for huge sums of money, all taking their odds from relatively few syndicate bosses with deep roots in the Indian crime underworld. Then as now, they are central to a massive, unregulated betting market that may be manipulated more or less at will, provided there are players on the take. Some players are honey trapped as they do not have choice to negotiate or are in such a situation that they can’t deny the offer (Sportsbetting, n.d.).
Assumptions
T-20 cricket is particularly susceptible because so much happens so quickly that individual performance can soon decline. Tim May, the chief executive of the international players` union FICA, is one of several influential figures in the game who believes that the number of Twenty20 matches now being played could tempt players to take money from bookmakers in return of spot fixing. Gambling on cricket matches televised in the Indian sub-continent is a hugely profitable business. Fortunes can be made if a gambler knows in advance what a particular bowler or batsman is going to do. Bets can be placed on every release. Only betting on horse racing at trackside is allowed in India but in practice around half of a market worth billions of dollars is probable to be illegal betting, mostly on cricket.
Above image is a comic take on betting in cricket. Rumors have increased since the advent of the Indian Premier League (IPL) six years ago although nobody has ever been charged. Few years ago during, Ashes tour of England an Australian player reported that he had been approached by a suspected illegal bookmaker in the team’s London hotel. Former England captain Michael Atherton said in a newspaper column earlier this year that one leading former international had told him 'emphatically' that spot-fixing was a regular occurrence. Former Pakistan captain Rashid Latif said this year that he knew of match-fixing in the now defunct Indian Cricket League. Three international skippers Hansie Cronje (South Africa), Salim Malik (Pakistan) and Mohammed Azharuddin (India) were banned for life in 2000 for helping to influence the results by spot fixing. Match-fixing had become recognized in one-day cricket in the 1990s and suspicion centered, in particular, on the one-day tournaments staged at Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (The Quint, 21st October, 2018).
As a result of the scandal the International Cricket Council (ICC) founded its Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) to monitor all international matches. The ACSU monitored the IPL tournament in India but not the second edition in South Africa because the Indian board thought the fee charged by the ICC was too high. While match-fixing has been described by the experts as something difficult to achieve as it usually has a direct bearing on the result of a game, spot-fixing is considered easy as all that a player has to do is tank his or her own performance at a pre-fixed schedule. Of course, if the fixer-in-chief can get a few spot-boys in the team, he can turn a match-fixer too (Sportsbetting, n.d.).
Spot-fixing is measured the most difficult amongst the three forms to detect as the betting syndicates merely place bets on specific moments of a match, mostly in cricket and that too in the shortest format of the game for example, the popular T20. The start of internet gambling has further bolstered the spot-fixing in games. The arrangement is simple enough. A fixer loom a player and sets up the schedule of how he will bowl. They'd decide that the sequence of his first over would be 0.W.R.0.NB.R.0 - which roughly interprets to a wide and a no-ball being planned in advance. The fixer then bets money on the same and gets to pocket monies often equal to a King's ransom. The pickings are then shared with the dishonest player or players. Cricket saw the first convictions in spot-fixing when three Pakistani players were nabbed. Fast bowlers Mohd. Aamer and Mohd. Asif were banned for bowling no-balls at pre-decided slots in conjunction with their captain Salman Butt. While Butt was sentenced to 30 months in jail, Asif was imprisoned for a month and Aamir for six months. Following these assurance in November 2011, further allegations surfaced against two Essex players - Danish Kaneria (of Pakistan) and Mervyn Westfield. The previous was given a life ban while the latter received a 5-year sentence from the ECB.
Recommendations
ICC has put an anti-corruption panel in place to address this spot fixing plague out of cricket. Every umpire and player receives a new phone sim card which is tapped for every minute. It is also unethical for the players that their private conversations are also monitored by someone. Honest players also have to bear the consequences because of few dishonest players. These issues are reported daily in the news and lots of players trying to make it big on the international stage are mostly found culprits. According to me a stringent action should be taken and investigation should be setup to treat the underworld betting scam. Or betting can be made legal so that players do it to perform better not to play poorly. Cricket has become an entertainment sport and is no longer a Gentleman’s game.
Legalising the betting is other thing but one other recommendation which is possible and it has proven successful among other sports is re thinking of old rules. Each new match fixing issue brings new questions and new solutions to solve the issue. Lot of fans are moving away in disgust. Changing the rules of betting would also help the government as they can tax the profits made by bettors. Bettors will also move towards legal and big time betting companies instead of trading with illegal companies.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) has said it has sought 'closer working relations' with the Interpol, an organisation which facilitates worldwide police cooperation, to widen the scope of its fight against corruption in the sport. The cooperation was discussed during ICC Anti-Corruption Unit General Manger, Alex Marshall's visit the Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France. 'The ICC and Interpol are keen on working together and our meetings in Lyon last week were productive. The ICC has an excellent relationship with law enforcement agencies in a number of countries but working with Interpol means we are connecting with their 194 members,' Marshall said in a media release. Most important thing remains is that the Education of the players at the ground level which is most important. No matter how much we talk about ethics and doing the right thing if betting has to move out of business then it starts from themselves. Never mind the number of checks to be kept on players it will still remain and keep plaguing the game, it starts from within because charity begins at home.
Conclusion
Only if at the ground level of the game players are taught about the ethics of the game and quick money is not the solution, then we can really stop this fixing. It is often noticed that local area small bets in community grounds also contributes to the mind-set of an emerging player. Even if they are not willing to do it, it comes to them as it is a part of the game. When players want to upgrade their game they go to bigger leagues which involves more cash. Ultimately there is always a risk involved. Lots of umpires are leaving the game at domestic level because of the pressure created by the illegal authorities to bet as per their requirements. To conclude I would say that it is in the roots of the game, since the time it has been invented and betting will always remain either you want it or not. So, one has to find a legal and alternate way to deal with it so that it does not interferes with the spirit of this great game.
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