There is no sadness like when a hero falls. There is no sound worse than a pedestal cra
cking. There is no anger more real than when faith is betrayed. Forget for a moment if you will a mourning nation, a bewildered world, a shamed game." Words penned down by Rohit Brijnath in India Today in April 2000 to mark a dark day for world sport.Rewind to Kolkata. January 29, 1980. It is a typical misty winter morning as rival captains Asif Iqbal and Gundappa Vishwanath walk out to toss at the Eden Gardens. It is the sixth Test of the series and India lead two-nil. As per the norm, the home captain flips the silver disc and Asif Iqbal calls. The Pakistan Captain picks up the coin before Vishwanath can see it and congratulates him on winning the toss. India decide to bat first in the dead rubber. A couple of days later after India had scored 331 Pakistan oddly went on to declare their innings at 272/4, well short of India’s first innings effort. Asif Iqbal was at the crease unbeaten on 15.
On the face of it, this appeared to be the start of just another Test match. In years to come it will be assumed more significance than most ever imagined as one of the earliest instances of dubious activities that later came to be classified as "fixing". Incidentally, it was the last Test Asif Iqbal ever played.
During the course of the mid-nineties, from Colombo to Karachi, cricket was to witness one of its darkest eras with several alleged instances of match fixing that came to light in different parts of the world – spreading not just to regular cricket hot spots but to non-traditional venues such as the Middle East -- culminating in the confessions of the late former South African Captain Hansie Cronje in 2000, about which Brijnath was writing in the extract at the start of this piece.
Flash forward to 2010 and the latest fixing controversy, again involving Pakistan cricket. This time, fixing of a slightly different nature. Spot fixing. A term, the world had not quite come across and one many still have not quite been able to fathom.
Well, to put it simply, spot fixing is match fixing without necessarily affecting the outcome of a game. Having said all that, the distinction is not just about playing with the words and definitions. The entire background of spot fixing is very different to the elaborately spun webs that spawned match fixing in the 90s. For starters, the world needs to know that it is not normal practice to get odds on whether or not a bowler will overstep in the 5th ball of the 17th over. In fact, nobody bets on that. Rather it is primarily about the outcome of a game with a few individual performances and possibilities thrown in.
In the latest instance of "spot" fixing, it was all about one unsavoury individual trying to prove to a few other not so savoury individuals in his profession that he had a few buddies in the Pakistan team and that for a few bob, they could "enact" a few harmless outcomes at certain points in a match. A few no balls and several thousand pounds later the cat was out of the bag. The skipper and two of his key bowling lieutenants bore the brunt. Even after the three were back home, more allegations began to fly around that threatened to do irreparable damage to Pakistan cricket as if it is not in enough turmoil
already.
The threat of proper match fixing has been kept in check with various anti-corruption measures and strict rules about cell phones in dressing rooms and the like. But spot fixing is far harder to control and has provided a new kind of headache for administrators and policing officials alike. You can somehow prevent, dissuade or at least monitor the possibility of teams tanking games for monetary gain, but how do you watch out for every no ball, wide, four or six that may mysteriously crop up at a pre-arranged moment?
At the end of the day, be it match fixing or the new spot fixing (like the game itself moving to 20-20, even betting trends are becoming quicker affairs) fixation, the motive is exactly the same. Greed. The lure of a few extra bucks. Easy bucks in the case of spot fixing.
One obvious remedy is to legalise the entire process (of betting, not fixing!) but that does not appear to have many takers. Particularly among those who can’t distinguish between harmless betting (no different to a quick punt on horses, roulette or blackjack) and the complex and murky world of match fixing.
In my view, spot fixing is more harmless than match fixing, but still equally wrong. Some have been punished, but given its ease of execution, more radical measures are needed to tackle spot fixing before the game truly finds itself in a very
tight ‘spot’.
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