Just not cricket (15 December 1998)

15 December 1998

Just not cricket

Tony Becca

PORT ELIZABETH - Do you remember the days when cricket was cricket - the days when a bowler would not appeal unless he was convinced a batsman was out, when a batsman would walk, and when a captain would call a batsman back, the days when the ideals of the game was such that anything unfair or below the belt, in any aspects of life, was greeted with "its not cricket"?

Well, those days are long gone.

In today's cricket, anything goes - to the extent where, apart from those who go on strike, players are guilty of fixing matches for a fee, and as recently came to light, one cricket board has been covering up their wrongs.

Fixing cricket matches is nothing new. Although it only came to light a few years ago when three Australian cricketers accused a Pakistani player for approaching them with bribes, there were rumours about since the early 1990s that it was going on - and that players from almost every Test-playing country were involved.

The latest episode, however, has shocked the cricket world - not because it involves Australians, and not Indians or Pakistanis, but because they behaved like paragons of virtue while pointing fingers, and because, as it is now known, they were involved, they were fined by their board, and that board hushed it up.

According to the Australians, Mark Waugh and Shane Warne, they did nothing wrong. Guilty or not, however, hardly anyone believes them.

The first question which Waugh and Warne should answer is this: why did they believe the bookmakers paid them 2,500 and 2,000 pounds sterling each? It could only be because the information they were passing on was important to the bookmakers.

The second: why did not Waugh and Warne, who, along with Tim May, fingered the Pakistanis, not tell about their experiences when they appeared before the committee which was set up by Pakistan to deal with the charges against Salim Malik and company and to investigate the involvement of Pakistani cricketers in match fixing.

The real shocking part of the revelation, however, was not that two Australian players were caught with their hands in the jar, but that after hearing about it, after fining them a total of 7,500 pounds sterling, the Australian Cricket Board - the same board which accused the Cricket Board of Pakistan of dodging the issue in an attempt to protect their players, covered it up, and on top of that, asked senior officials of the International Cricket Council to do likewise - which, in a disservice to their colleagues on the Council, to the game, to honesty, and what should be to their embarrassment, they did.

The behaviour of the ACB, like that of the ICC, was disgraceful, and no excuse, no talk about the players coming clean when they were put on the spot, no talk about protecting the image of Australian cricket is acceptable.

The players came clean simply because the game was up: they were caught, the proof was there, they were cornered, and they had no alternative but to come clean.

And as far as protecting the image of Australian was concerned, that should have been secondary to the truth - especially in a situation in which those were the players who accused others who, if they are found guilty, could end up in a Pakistani jail.

As the governing body for the sport in Australia, the ACB is expected to act with integrity, and by being party to a cover-up, its members, like the two players, have embarrassed not only Australian cricket, but also the Australian people.

Australians feel betrayed by both the players and the ACB, and the hurt has been expressed not only by ex-players like Sir Donald Bradman and Neil Harvey, but also by Prime Minister John Howard and the crowd which booed Mark Waugh on Friday during the Test match against England in Adelaide.

Apart from the hope that cricket boards around the world and the ICC will now accept that cricket, like almost every other sport, is no longer what cricket was and that they must be vigilant, the criticisms which have been heaped on the ACB by Australia's ex-players, the Australian Prime Minister, and the Australian people, should serve as a lesson to them.

Source :: The Jamaica Gleaner (https://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/)