Col­in Croft

It was not the con­tro­ver­sial UDRS–Um­pire De­ci­sion Re­view Sys­tem–that sup­pos­ed­ly caught a big-time busi­ness­man sug­gest­ing that he had used Pak­istani in­ter­na­tion­al crick­eters to do spot-bet­ting fix­es for him, per­haps, maybe cer­tain­ly, mak­ing him rich­er. It was a ma­jor news­pa­per's cam­eras, prob­a­bly in one of the but­tons of a shirt, or a cam­era in a pen, clipped to a pock­et, or even a cam­era in the de­sign­er glass­es, that helped. These things do ex­ist. They are al­so very old tech­nol­o­gy–James Bond was in­vent­ed in 1962. As some­one known for my love of tech­nol­o­gy, I am pleased that it has, again, been used in the 'right' cir­cum­stances. As Andy Gar­cia, as Ter­ry Bene­dict, sug­gest­ed in "Ocean's Eleven", while su­per­vis­ing the takes of his casi­no, "in here, some­one is al­ways look­ing and lis­ten­ing. You nev­er know who that per­son is!" These days, that is true every­where!

Hon­est­ly, I am nei­ther sur­prised nor con­fused, as so many of the crick­et­ing au­thor­i­ties seem to be, about this sit­u­a­tion. While I do not con­done it, and nev­er will–every­one is in­no­cent un­til proven guilty–on­ly an os­trich with his head in a hole, but with his en­tire rear out in the open, would not know that this has been go­ing on.

Sport in 2010 is ex­treme­ly big busi­ness. Bil­lions, per­haps tril­lions or even quadrillions are in­vest­ed dai­ly by "the bad guys" to make a killing, tak­ing no pris­on­ers along the way. But I am al­so very em­bar­rassed that the game that I played with such gus­to, a game that has been en­joyed so much by so many and played by so few, since its re­al in­cep­tion in 1877, now it has again been se­vere­ly mud­died, bring­ing about so much more doubt. Yet, as was ex­plained to me re­cent­ly by a quite fi­nan­cial­ly able re­al-es­tate mag­nate, "most peo­ple do not know what re­al­i­ty is, much less to have any re­al be­lief in it at all." I have no prob­lem what­so­ev­er with any in­ter­na­tion­al sports-per­son try­ing to make as much mon­ey as pos­si­ble, es­pe­cial­ly when the spe­cif­ic ex­per­tise has a very short shelf-life, as for ex­am­ple, crick­et; 10 years is about the ex­tent of good top-ranked play. Bring­ing the game it­self in­to dis­re­pute, though, is an­oth­er sit­u­a­tion al­to­geth­er! I re­al­ly ex­pect that, at least, the play­ers will be hon­est, even if they do in­volve them­selves in some­times un­cre­den­tialed, un­sanc­tioned events, as was so with the now de­funct In­di­an Crick­et League (ICL), as op­posed to the In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL).

I am al­so re­al­is­tic and world­ly enough to recog­nise that "match-fix­ing" and "spot-bet­ting" in any sport that has so many num­bers, sta­tis­tics, di­vi­sions and sub-di­vi­sions, as es­pe­cial­ly crick­et, base­ball and horse-rac­ing do, is akin to drug run­ning; open for the fix! Peo­ple sim­ply fool them­selves, es­pe­cial­ly those in au­thor­i­ty in po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions. Most may not even want or like to ac­cept it all but sim­ply, all ne­far­i­ous at­ti­tudes can­not be elim­i­nat­ed, try as the laws do to say that. Just look at the drug trades around the world. No where is more mon­ey spent on il­le­gal drugs–tak­ing them, trans­port­ing them, or in­deed pro­duc­ing them–than in the Amer­i­c­as. North Amer­i­ca, re­cent­ly West­ern Eu­rope, are the pri­ma­ry con­sumers. Try as they might, the au­thor­i­ties are los­ing that war! No-one, any­where, could stop it from hap­pen­ing! I am sure that you have heard this too–"The stricter the gov­ern­ment, the wis­er the pop­u­la­tion." Peo­ple will al­ways break rules!

The au­thor­i­ties of any sport, and per­haps the ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­lace too, ob­vi­ous­ly will not ac­cept or agree with the du­bi­ous prac­tices, plans or events of some of the play­ers, or their agents but like it or not, they ex­ist and will in most prob­a­bil­i­ty, con­tin­ue to ex­ist.

Any­one with re­al sense about any sport will agree. Ten­nis, ath­let­ics, box­ing, foot­ball, crick­et and base­ball, to name a few dis­ci­plines, have all had their share of this same stuff. Un­der­stand this, no-one that I know has even thought of fix­ing a crick­et game. We played hard, rough, tough, dog-eat-dog crick­et, but none of us ever cheat­ed. At least, I have no knowl­edge of any­one that I have ever played with, even think­ing of cheat­ing.

There were sim­ply too much brava­do, pride and too much tal­ent avail­able for cheat­ing to be thought of, much less to creep in. Al­so, im­por­tant­ly, West In­dies crick­et pre-2000 could on­ly play for pride, since none of us made any mon­ey that is even worth a men­tion. Even the Aus­tralians and Eng­lish­men had to ac­knowl­edge that the West In­dies crick­et teams from 1928 to es­pe­cial­ly the 1970's, 80's and 90's atleast, played with such pas­sion and pride that no-one could prob­a­bly have of­fered us to sell-out games. So, let us check out the fol­low­ing 2010 sup­po­si­tion. Tell me that this is not re­al life! I am an ex­cel­lent, brand new, ex­cit­ing bud­ding 18-20 year old crick­eter from any crick­et-play­ing coun­try ex­cept ei­ther Eng­land or Aus­tralia. In those two places, the rules are a bit more strin­gent, and the out­look more planned and ap­peal­ing to the young play­ers. I al­so hail from a very poor back­ground, en­vi­ron­ment and up­bring­ing. So far, on­ly my en­thu­si­asm and nat­ur­al tal­ent has brought me to any­one's no­tice.

Al­ready, even with­out any ex­pe­ri­ences, I am be­ing com­pared to some of the great past play­ers of the game! So, one day, I am train­ing � run­ning and pump­ing weights � in a park or gym some­where. An­oth­er per­son, male or fe­male, some­one I have nev­er seen or met be­fore, joins me in my run. Be­fore long, we have a short-breathed, but high­ly an­i­mat­ed con­ver­sa­tion go­ing. We have not cov­ered a mile to­geth­er when it is sug­gest­ed that I could be paid, ini­tial­ly, in ex­cess of US$100,000, if I could do a few very triv­ial things on a cer­tain day, in a cer­tain in­ter­na­tion­al game. Re­mem­ber, this is sport 2010, where on­ly mon­ey seems to reign! My heart al­most stops with the ex­cite­ment of the mon­ey men­tioned, since I am ful­ly pure, with no knowl­edge of any cor­rup­tion at all in my mind. Al­so, I have nev­er even seen that much mon­ey on any cal­cu­la­tor, much less to have seen it in re­al life. I al­ready know what that kind of mon­ey could do for my poor fam­i­ly and rel­a­tives. I am not even sure what will hap­pen to my ca­reer with that kind of mon­ey pos­si­ble now. Giv­en my youth and lack of knowl­edge or sport­ing ed­u­ca­tion, I may not even care. I al­so be­lieve that my co-run­ner and I are the on­ly two peo­ple privy to this con­ver­sa­tion. Ladies and gen­tle­men, I rest my case! This sce­nario is pos­si­ble, prob­a­bly prob­a­ble too! This could hap­pen any­where, any­time, any sport, in 2010. No-one will ever know, ex­cept for greed or care­less­ness. If nei­ther hap­pens, it is a bond be­tween two. No-one un­der­stands or be­lieves re­al re­al­i­ty!