Pakistan ‘match-fixing’: what’s wrong with this picture?

I’ve been asked to appear on a lot of radio and TV shows since the Pakistan story broke last week. So far, I’ve done nine media interviews (including a long chat with the producer of what appears to be Canada’s answer to Radio 4′s Moral Maze).

As it happens, I am reasonably well placed to comment. SPIN magazine has given a lot of space to exclusive interviews with Pakistani players over the years and I personally have picked up a lot of background information and colour along the way.

However, most of what I’ve said on Five Live, Sky News and BBC London has been based on material very much in the public domain, rather than my own inside knowledge or experience.

Oddly, however, I seem to have been one of the only people pointing some of these things out.

1) Pakistan started the current series with someone in their side who was on police bail for spot-fixing a game in England in 2009: Danish Kaneria. On police bail! In England! For allegedly spot-fixing a game in England!

Does that seem odd to you?

Shouldn’t such a player have been suspended, possibly on full pay, for the duration of an investigation? A bank manager charged with fraud would be put on paid gardening leave, with no presumption of guilt. Does logic not apply in cricket?

2) Mohammad Asif was also in the side. I love watching Asif bowl and I do wish that the following were not true. However, he has three drugs offences against his name and yet there he is/was in Pakistan’s starting XI. Look at the fuss in England over athlete Dwain Chambers being allowed to come back after ONE offence. And yet somehow cricket does not seem bothered by Asif’s case – or not sufficiently bothered to step in and do anything much about it.

3) Kamran Akmal, accused by the team manager of deliberately under-performing and having connections with bookmakers on last winter’s tour of Australia, was also in the side. Seemingly, the PCB had decided that Akmal was not dodgy in the bookmaking sense of the word but, in fact, was just a wicket-keeper who couldn’t catch. (He dropped Mike Hussey four times in Pakistan’s, um, weird defeat to Australia in Sydney.) They kept him in the side,

None of these necessarily has any direct bearing on the current case.

However, it shows an indulgence from the PCB towards its players and an indulgence from the international cricket community towards the PCB but, possibly, towards the unsavoury elements of the game in general.

A lot of shrugging and abdication of responsibility.

And remember – these bits of information are clearly in the public domain. It’s tempting to ask how much indulgence or apathy has been shown towards matters that have never reached the public domain.

As fans, we wish that things weren’t true. We don’t want to hear that Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif have failed drugs tests and won’t be going to the 2007 World Cup. We want to rewind the clock 24 hours and think it never happened and then see them in action at the tournament, two of the world’s great bowlers.

Many people wish that Mohammad Amir, in particular, was not caught up in the latest allegations.

Many within English cricket wish that it had not been recommended by Judge Qayyum’s report that Mushtaq Ahmed not ever be allowed to hold positions in team management.

But wishful thinking is not much of a way to stamp out wrong-doing or set an example or organise justice.

For five days last week, the ICC declared that it was the PCB’s decision whether to suspend the three accused players in the light of the spot-fixing allegations.

Finally, the ICC suspended the players AFTER they had voluntarily withdrawn.

Which says it all.

And no: the ICC suspending the players would not have been a presumption of guilt. It was, surely, legally quite possible, had there been the will; a way to defuse the situation and get the focus back on the game.

Other sports would look at cricket and wonder how competently our game has tried to eradicate unsavoury elements of the game – or even the circumances that have allegedly allowed them to fester.