Cricket’s Day of Shame

By: Rashid Ali Siddiqui, President, Pakistan Sports Writers Federation (PSWF). The conviction by an English court of three Pakistani cricketers in a spot-fixing case has finally opened the can of worms and the truth behind what sports officials have tried not to divulge for more than three cricketing decades and, possibly, fifty years in other sports.

Fixing is a menace and is rampant. November 3, 2011 is cricket’s “blackest day”. Three Pakistani cricketers, former captain Salman Butt and fast bowlers, Mohammed Asif and Mohammad Amir, made cricket history for all the wrong reasons as the first cricketers to be jailed after being proved guilty of spot-fixing. A day of shame. On that day. London’s Southward Crown Court delivered its verdict.

Salman Butt – jailed for two years and six months; Mohammad Asif, one year; Mohammad Amir, six months. And, arguably, the guiltiest person of all, Mazhar Majeed, the players’ agent, received a two-year and eight months sentence. So the curtain fell on one of cricket’s most sordid and shameful scandals. Sadly, that is not the end of the story. The

International Cricket Council (ICC) is not the only sports body facing the “fixing” curse. The United Europe Football Association (UEFA) has a much bigger problem – big enough to attract the attention of the European Parliament, which is the latest political body to join UEFA’s efforts to combat match-fixing, highlighted by president Michel Platini’s address to Euro sports ministers.

The Australian government has gone a major step forward, introducing laws against match-fixing with a maximum 10-year imprisonment for offenders. Australian Sports Minister, Mark Arbib, said: “Having tough penalties in place is the only way to deal with the scourge.”

This is where the ICC has not gone far enough. Setting up its own corruption unit to detect and punish practices is fine but, as yet, it has not appealed to governments of the cricket-playing countries to take punitive measures at government level. Lord Condon, former head of ICC Anti-corruption and Security Unit (ASCU), has accepted that fixing was not restricted to the sub-continent and that almost every cricketing country was involved in corruption in some way.

Sadly, Pakistan remains the first country during the last decade to be subject to three top-level enquiries by learned Supreme Court judges. Former Pakistan cricket captain Salman Butt (R) arrives at Southward Crown Court on November 2, 2011. Butt and Mohammad Asif, were both found guilty of match fixing charges and conspiracy.

Back in 1979-80, when Asif Iqbal was the Pakistan captain, he was accused of betting on the toss against India. The India captain G. “Vishy” Vishwanath alleges in his book that the toss was never completed. Iqbal said simply: “Congratulations. You’ve won it.”

A Australia lost the 1994-95 in Pakistan 1-0, after which three Aussie players, Shane Warne, Tim May and Mark Waugh accused the then Pakistan captain Salim Malik of offering them bribes to bowl badly in a Test and a one-day match. The Pakistan Cricket Board requested Justice Fakhruddin G. Ibrahim to hold an inquiry. Justice Ibrahim, now retired, acquitted Malik of all charges in his report primarily on the basis of insufficient evidence. Crucially, Warne, May and Waugh refused to testify.

Pakistan cricketers were not only condemned from outside. Within their own ranks Basit Ali and Rashid Latif accused teammates of match-fixing and both went into premature retirement over the issue during a tour of South Africa. Later, Aaqib Javed and Aamir Sohail made similar legations.

Another probe committee enquiry set up under Justice Ejaz Yousef collapsed “without a ball being bowled”, as it were, because the committee did not constitute a court with powers to compel witnesses to speak out. As an exparte enquiry, it also lacked opportunity for cross-examination or representation.

Proper natural justice was restored when Pakistan’s president ordered the chief justice of the Lahore High Court to nominate a judge for a one-man judicial commission under the Commission of Inquiry Act, 1956.

Duly appointed under Justice Malik Muhammad Qayyum, the commission recommended that Salim Malik be banned for life and fined Rs 1M with fines for former captain Wasim Akram (Rs 0.3m), Mushtaq Ahmad (Rs0.3m), Atur-ur-Rehmann, Waqar Younis, Inzaman-ul-Haq, Akram Raza and Saeed Anwar (Rs 0.1m each). The shame does not end there – nor with just Pakistan.

If there was one cricketer who should have gone behind bars for match-fixing, it was the tainted South African captain, Hansie Cronje, a contemporary of Pakistan captains Salim Malik and Wasim Akram. He might have done had he not died in a mysterious plane crash in May, 2002 soon after his revelations. Even today, players whose careers were tinged by connection to Cronje, remain frightened to say anything. Cronje had confessed before the King Commission of Inquiry to what he called ‘an unfortunate love of money’.

Full extent of that “love” may never be known but recent revelations of the 72 bank accounts in the Cayman Islands held in his name would suggest, at very least, that only a small part of the story has been told. Cronje admitted to the commission that he had accepted at least $130,000 from illegal bookmakers and other undesirables between 1996 and 2000.

Two other South African players, Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams admitted to conspiring with Cronje to underperform in one-day matches in India in March 2000 and three, Mark Boucher, Jacques Kallis and Lance Klusener revealed how Cronje “joked” about receiving their help to throw the second Test in Bangalore.

Sadly, “fixing” in cricket and in sport is no longer a “joke”. But it has taken three misguided Pakistan players, a greedy agent and a judge in London to finally say: “Enough is enough.”