Wilde S: Match fixing, not easy (18 Feb 95)
Simon Wilde finds it hard to determine quite how a cricket match could be fixed
18-Feb-1995
Few chances for purchase power to be persuasive - Simon Wilde
Simon Wilde finds it hard to determine quite how a cricket
match could be fixed.
So, you want to fix an international cricket match. No questions asked. It matters not if you work for a dodgy bookmaker or
a shady betting syndicate. Mum is the word. The question,
though, is how to go about it?
The surest way would be to approach anyone with a role on the
field, which means players and umpires. The latter have the
greatest potential to influence a match and might appear the best
option. As one former international player said this week as
allegations of bribery against Pakistanis attempting to influence
the outcome of Test matches abounded: ``All a bloke has to do (to
be given out by an umpire) is get hit on the pads or play and
miss one outside off stump. It might take a bad decision to give
him out, but bad decisions happen. Human error.``
Yet many umpires are inured to attempts at coercion for
years, they have lived with the possibility of death threats for
giving the wrong man out in the wrong country and might be immune
to persuasions. At the top, their careers are more assured than
those of players. To buy one would be expensive.
An individual player would be cheaper, but less effective. He
might be useful in providing you with the sort of details concerning tactics, selections and fitness that Dean Jones claims he
was asked for, but, if you want to bring about a particular
result, he will be unable to do it by himself.
Ideally, you would buy a whole team and instruct them to
under-perform, but that would need a lot of money. In which case,
a few leading players will have to suffice, for they know that
the occasional sub-standard performance will not jeopardise their
places.
``I think it certainly is possible to contrive a result by
bribing two or three key players,`` Richard Hutton, the former
England all-rounder, said yesterday. `` Cricket is an unpredictable game, but certain players such as spin bowlers on a turning
pitch can have an important influence.
``It would perhaps be easier for a batsman to `throw` a match
than a bowler, because one bad shot would be enough. A bowler
would have to consistently put the ball in the `wrong` spot, and,
even then, he could not guarantee that a full toss will not be
hit down the throat of a fielder.``
Once you have got your players, you must select the occasion. A
limited-overs match might be better than a Test match no chance
of a draw, less scope for unexpected fluctuations and more games
to choose from.
All this may sound implausible, but such things have happened. In the first quarter of the Nineteenth century, gambling
on cricket matches was rife and so was corruption. Bookmakers
would go down to Hampshire, the nursery of the game, early in the
season to buy up players, or recruit them at the great cricketers` hostel, the
On one famous occasion, in 1817, players of both Nottingham
and England were bought to lose the same match, Nottingham failing to do so. Some of the best players in the land were involved,
notably William Lambert, who was banished from Lord`s for his
part in the affair.
Such dark practices died out, according to H.S. Altham in his
history of the game, because ``the number of good players was
steadily on the increase, and, where it had once been enough to
buy but one or two in order to make sure of a result, it was now
necessary to square perhaps half a side``.
Yet Altham, writing in the 1920s, could not have anticipated
that, half a century later, the game would welcome betting tents
and open its doors to Kerry Packer.
Source :: The Times