But match-fixing is a reality with which cricket followers in other countries have learned to cope – or else they have switched off the game altogether.
In the heyday of match-fixing in England, we did not do it for anything so sordid as money. It was good old-fashioned barter: we will lose this championship game if you let us win the Sunday League match. Only on one occasion that I know of was betting involved, and that cannot be revealed here, as the law tends to bat on the side of the fixer.
But from the 1990s, according to Justice Cooke during his summing up, and a few years earlier by other reckonings, fixing for money spread through south Asia – and through quite a few cricketers from other countries who played in south Asia.
Pakistan were first to grasp this stinging nettle. In 1999 their government appointed Justice Qayyum to inquire. As usual there, nothing was straightforward: rumours circulated about the game the judge was playing, and about the pressure the government put on him to make his sentences mild.
Nevertheless, former Pakistan captain Salim Malik was banned for life in 2000. Here at last was certifiable evidence that something was rotten in the state of international cricket.
Malik still lives in Lahore but does little more than play golf, go to his club, and brood – with some reason. He is the only one still carrying the can. All the others shamed and fined by Qayyum have come again, and risen to equal heights of eminence as coaches and commentators, without a single act of contrition.
India came next, and did the best job so far. Their Central Bureau of Investigation did not, like the ICC's Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, simply wash and wring their hands. The CBI used 'robust' interrogation techniques, firstly to make the Indian bank clerk-turned-bookmaker MK Gupta sing, which he did, like a lark, telling them all about his fixes.
The CBI then grilled the Indian cricketers named by Gupta. Of course, one or two were too famous to be brought down. But at least the Indian captain, Mohammad Azharuddin, and the one-day vice-captain Ajay Jadeja, were banned, and a few more besides. Not that anyone pleaded guilty, as in Pakistan: it would be more than your life was worth to confess.
Unfortunately the CBI could not grill any of the non-Indian players that Gupta had spoken of dealing with. Most Test-playing countries had at least one international player who had dealt with him, and their boards all did an excellent job in blocking like nightwatchmen, until the media went away.
Only the mafia did not go away. The period around 2000 and 2001 when India and Pakistan held inquiries, and when the late Hansie Cronje confessed in South Africa, was the window: the moment when the sport's governing bodies, fired by the indignation of cricket followers, might just have broken the links between the south Asian mafia and the dressing-room. But there were too many skeletons in too many cupboards, the moment passed, and match-fixing became much more discreet, if no less systemic.
The King Inquiry in South Africa was a classic. The terms of reference were so limited that the lid could only be opened a little – and as soon as Cronje made a confession it was closed, so no more damage could be done to the national image. A partial confession too, some would say, as he got no further than exposing a couple of his non-white players, Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams.
Since then, until Tuesday, virtually nothing. In the last decade the ICC has pinned Kenya's captain, Maurice Odumbe, and banned him for five years, but that was for 'associating with a known bookmaker'. The only other player who has been banned (for two years), Marlon Samuels of the West Indies, was guilty of nothing more than naivety in talking to a punter.
The ICC have now equipped themselves to fire shots, but they needed the News of the World to supply the bullets, when their own ACSU should have done so.
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