Steps against cricket corruption must start at the grass roots level

"These are to inform gentlemen, or others who delight in cricket playing, that a match at cricket of ten gentlemen on each side will be played for £10 a head each game (five being designed) and £20 the odd one." This was a notice of a two-day match at Clapham Common in 1700, according to SM Toyne writing in History Today, 1955. By the 1740s, betting on cricket on matches went past the £1,000 mark, he continues.

In the 19th century, "bookmakers attended the matches, odds were called as the fortunes of the game fluctuated, and side bets on the scores of individual players led to bribery and cheating. One noted player took £100 to lose a match. It was not until the MCC had been recognized as the ruling authority that reforms were effected, and only at the beginning of the Victorian era was the game wholly purged from this canker."

Wholly purged? The recent history of cricket and Paul Condon's report suggest that was perhaps a naive assumption. Condon has suggested in his report that English domestic cricket in the 1970s was the birthplace of match-fixing in cricket, as we know it today.

In an Indian context, the following remarks by Condon on English county cricket are particularly significant. "If a match was of vital importance to one team and not to the other, then an accommodation would be reached between the teams as to who would win. Similar arrangements would be made to secure bowling and batting points, if applicable," Condon says.

Such arrangements have not been uncommon in Indian domestic cricket, both at the Ranji Trophy level and in local league cricket. It is true that such conspiracies were hatched not for monetary gain, but to seek unfair advantage at the expense of a third party, also in the hunt for points or leadership or seeking to avoid relegation to a lower division. As a player active in the sixties and seventies, I knew of and occasionally saw such practices at close quarters, though I, like some other cricketers who felt strongly on such issues, was never party to such artificial results. Unfortunately, some leading lights indulged in such unethical practices and many others were silent spectators.

When the underworld begins to get involved in match results and players are subjected to physical threats, as indicated in the Condon report then the menace of match fixing assumes frightening dimensions. While I do not presume to offer pat solutions that will work in such a scenario, I believe players known to be scrupulously honest are rarely approached by wrongdoers. It therefore becomes essential to inculcate the right values in our young cricketers right from the start. Cricket administrators could make a beginning by stopping the rampant age cheating in the subcontinent, often aided and abetted by cricket bodies, which enables young players to continue to play in age-groups they have left behind. Genuine efforts are finally being made in this regard, I know, but an all-out effort to root out this and similar evils will go a long way towards character-building, perhaps the only long-term insurance practicable against players going astray.