0The IPL — In competition with the Snooker?

Two of my favour­ites sports have dom­in­ated the sports news pages this week, but sadly for all the wrong reas­ons.  The last few years have seen a sig­ni­fic­ant increase in the num­ber of reports of gambling-related cor­rup­tion, is this a case of increas­ing crime or increas­ing crime detection?

Let’s start with the short answer (and a bad joke) — I don’t know, but if any­one fan­cies a punt I’d bet that it’s a bit of both.  So what am I actu­ally refer­ring to?  Former snook­er world num­ber 5 Steph­en Lee has been banned for 12 years from the sport after being found guilty of throw­ing matches.  This isn’t the first case of cor­rup­tion in snook­er, nor I sus­pect will it be the last.  We’re a crick­et site though, so I want to focus on the cricket.

Indi­an police and the BCCI  are cur­rently invest­ig­at­ing vari­ous alleg­a­tions of cor­rup­tion related to the IPL.  The roll-call of people involved is depressing:

• Gurunath Meiyap­pan, former own­er of Chen­nai Super Kings and son-in-law of the head of the BCCI, has been charged by police
• Shanthak­u­maran Srees­anth, Indi­an fast bowl­er, has been banned for life for spot fixing
• Ankeet Chavan, a team mate of Srees­anth has also been banned for life for spot-fixing
• Lalit Modi, former IPL com­mis­sion­er has been banned for life from involve­ment in the sport by the BCCI
• Asad Rauf, a Pakistani ICC umpire, has been charged by police in rela­tion to spot fixing

It would be quite easy to sneer at the IPL and Indi­an crick­et, espe­cially as T20 isn’t any­thing like the won­der­ful game of Test crick­et, but I’ll leave that to the tabloids.  I’m more inter­ested in how things can move for­ward as I doubt any­one wants to see more of this in the future.  After all it is the pay­ing sup­port­ers who end up being the ones cheated, either because their team loses, or because they are deprived of watch­ing some of the most tal­en­ted play­ers (as well evid­enced by the 3 young Pakistani crick­eters jailed in the UK back in 2010).  We should also note that this kind of bet­ting is already illeg­al in India, and that the BCCI has clearly sent a strong mes­sage by issu­ing life­time bans.  So what should the inter­na­tion­al crick­et­ing com­munity do?

1 — Remove your head from the sand

The first step, as you’ve prob­ably heard before, is to admit there is a prob­lem.  Even if you don’t think it is endem­ic there clearly is cor­rup­tion occur­ring in crick­et at the highest levels on a fairly reg­u­lar basis.  One of the biggest prob­lems is that so many reports of cor­rup­tion end up being unsub­stan­ti­ated and any doubts seem to me (as an out­sider) to be used by author­it­ies to brush mat­ters under the table.  It may be that this is not as bad as it has been in the past, but I haven’t heard many pro’s or former pro’s com­ing out say­ing that they think the author­it­ies are pro­act­ive.  The ICC should pub­licly admit there are prob­lems, and pro­mote a broad cam­paign, based around the fol­low­ing points, to drive cor­rup­tion out of the game.

2 — Protect whistleblowers

Last year at the York­shire 150 year cel­eb­ra­tions I went to an even­ing with Geoff Boy­cott, Michael Vaughan, Andrew Gale, and Harry Gra­tion from BBC Look North.  In the second part of the even­ing Sir Geoff talked a little bit about cor­rup­tion in the game.  He was very clear (in the way that he so often is) that he knows of a sig­ni­fic­ant num­ber of cases of cor­rup­tion in the game but that he can­’t name names as he would face leg­al action.  There should be a way for play­ers, offi­cials and any­one else involved in the game to sub­mit such inform­a­tion to the ICC, or an inde­pend­ent mon­it­or­ing body, in a way that is anonym­ous or in a way where they have pro­tec­tion from leg­al action.  Such inform­a­tion can then be cor­rob­or­ated and thor­oughly investigated.

Anoth­er source of poten­tial inform­a­tion is the book­ies who are tak­ing the bets.  An anonym­ous tip off sys­tem (as tak­ing these types of bets usu­ally isn’t leg­al) for book­ies who might, for example, have spot­ted a lot of money on a par­tic­u­lar no-ball or have oth­er sus­pi­cions.  If this inform­a­tion was called-in before games, and the pre­dicted no balls or oth­er pre­dicted cheat­ing occurred on sev­er­al occa­sions, this would be good reas­on to invest­ig­ate the play­er in question.

3 — An amnesty process

On many occa­sions, play­ers who get involved in spot-fix­ing or oth­er cor­rup­tion, have been trapped into it from a very young age.  The ICC should devise and estab­lish a sys­tem where before a play­er makes his or her début at first-class level, they are giv­en a chance to ‘con­fess’ any pre­vi­ous issues that might oth­er­wise be used against them, without being pen­al­ised.  If this were done before a play­er had played any first-class crick­et, it would be unlikely that the play­er would have had the oppor­tun­ity to carry out any cor­rupt play that had any sig­ni­fic­ant value to people pla­cing bets so the lack of a pen­alty could be jus­ti­fied.  This would allow play­ers who had been trapped as chil­dren an oppor­tun­ity to be free of any bind they felt in.  Such a pro­cess should be com­bined with an edu­ca­tion pro­gramme which is designed to help play­ers identi­fy any attempt to entrap them in the future.

4 — Change the culture at the top

Pub­li­cise, praise and pro­mote top play­ers who pub­licly report attempts to bribe or black­mail them into any form of cheat­ing.  Using these indi­vidu­als as pos­it­ive examples may encour­age young­er play­ers, and play­ers in lower leagues to real­ise it is import­ant to report any­thing sus­pi­cious and that they will be taken seriously.

5 — Severe penalties for the source of the problem

The ICC should lobby gov­ern­ments to legis­late for the severest pen­al­ties for people found guilty of organ­ising cheat­ing in all sports.  I don’t mean the play­ers who carry it out, but the indi­vidu­als who run the crim­in­al oper­a­tions that bribe or black­mail play­ers.  Some­times these indi­vidu­als get what appear to be very leni­ent sen­tences, nowhere near enough to dis­suade oth­ers from the tempta­tion of the poten­tial fin­an­cial gains.  I would like to see 5+ year jail sen­tences and fines large enough to strip even very wealthy indi­vidu­als of all of their assets.

6 — Penalties for players

Any play­er found guilty of cheat­ing must face the most severe pen­alty — a life­time ban from the game, a large fine, and poten­tially jail.  The only excep­tion to this is in the case of play­ers who come for­ward and admit their involve­ment before they are under invest­ig­a­tion and co-oper­ate fully with the author­it­ies.  These cases would have to be judged on their indi­vidu­al mer­its, but I would sug­gest that pen­al­ties be much less severe, per­haps a 1–2 year ban along with a con­tract that requires the play­er to be involved in pub­lic cam­paigns and edu­ca­tion pro­grammes for young­er generations.

7 — Seek ideas from others

Crick­et is an inter­na­tion­al game, which crosses cul­tur­al bound­ar­ies.  People in Pakistan, New Zea­l­and or the West Indies may well have per­spect­ives and ideas about how to deal with cor­rup­tion that I don’t.  It would be wise for the ICC to always be listen­ing for sug­ges­tions from around the world about pos­sible ways to com­bat corruption.