The PlanetCricket View: Cricket in crisis?again ? A Planetcricket response

[PlanetCricket]

Article by barmyarmy -

Like all true fans of the sport I suspect that the sickening feelings I had on reading the latest allegations to hit the game were d?j? vu all over again. Did corrupt cricketers go away just because the ICC formed a unit to investigate it?

The alleged scale, and I say alleged advisedly, of this new scandal seems to threaten the integrity of the sport once again. Two players lauded for their positive contribution to this series, captain Salman Butt and young pace bowler Mohammed Amir, are suddenly accused of deliberately, and frankly ineptly, serving up no balls on demand. Also accused are “out of form” wicket keeper Kamran Akmal, whose performance against Australia at Sydney raised the spectre of match fixing at the time and bowlers Mohammed Asif and Saeed Ajmal.

There are of course no shortage of agents and hangers on claiming influence with the players and whilst we should take the word of a man setting out to impress potential clients with a pinch of salt the evidence produced thus far is damning. Added to the circumstantial evidence and attendant rumours that are fuelled by a situation like this and it’s hard to see how England can take the field in the limited overs games against a team who apparently planned on deliberately losing matches.

This is no time for jubilation, finger-pointing and I-told-you-sos. It may not even be a time for innocent til proven guilty. Time will tell but I for one would be very surprised if the announced Pakistan squad for the ODIs and T20s remains unaltered by this news.

Let’s get it right this time and make fixing any aspect of a cricket match so risky that none will consider it worth it.



More...

 

[Afriditown07]

Agree. ICC must take severe action and be more cautious so this incident doesn't repeat itself. It's just the PCB. Any other Cricket board would've noticed that the agent was participating in suspicious activities. The PCB was even warned about it! They didn't care at all. If it was the ECB for example, the "agent" would have an eye kept on very closely at the least and this whole situation could have been avoided. A corrupt board will obviously lead to corrupt players.

 

[Jocar83]

All people implicated should be banned for life.

 

[benfoulkes]

I think that the new proposals of a test cricket league actually go some way towards reducing the chances of corruption taking place in cricket. By having more meaningful matches, players would be less tempted to throw games, or bowl no-balls deliberately.

It is interesting the ICC have decided to announce the new test cricket play off idea now, straight on the back of the corruption allegations (obviously it could just be a coincidence but I'm not so sure) the idea seems rushed- keeping the future tours program (in my opinion an outdated plan) is a very easy way out to the growing clamour for more competitive and meaningful test cricket without upsetting the applecart.

I have started a blog on this- I personally think that the future of test cricket is threatened by more than just corruption
The Beautiful Game (and it's not football): Saving Test Cricket

Ben Foulkes