0I-IPL - kukhuphiswano kunye ne-Snooker?

Imidlalo emibini yam endiyithandayo iye yalawula amaphepha eendaba ezemidlalo kule veki, kodwa ngelishwa ngazo zonke izizathu ezingalunganga. Kule minyaka imbalwa idlulileyo ndibone ukwanda okukhulu kwenani leengxelo zorhwaphilizo olunxulumene nokungcakaza, is this a case of increas­ing crime or increas­ing crime detection?

Makhe siqale impendulo elifutshane (kwaye iziqhulo olubi) — 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, ngoko ndifuna ukugxininisa kwi qakamba.

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, ibi ityala ngamapolisa
• Shanthak­u­maran Srees­anth, Indi­an fast bowl­er, ibi wavalwa ubomi ukuba itshatshazi nokulungisa
• form Chavan, a team mate of Srees­anth has also been banned for life for spot-fixing
• LaLiT Modi, former IPL com­mis­sion­er has been wavalwa ubomi from involve­ment in the sport by the BCCI
• asad Rauf, a Pakistani ICC umpire, ibi ityala ngamapolisa 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, mhlawumbi ngenxa yokuba iqela labo libethwa, 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

Inyathelo lokuqala, 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 (endleleni ukuba wenjenjalo rhoqo) 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, umzekelo, 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, semali eninzi, 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.