The Non-Event | Thebigtip

In a London court room, after two weeks of claim and counter claim, Lawyers for Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt are making one last desperate attempt to convince a jury of their clients innocence in match fixing and bribery. No doubt these are monumental proceedings, but are they as controversial as most make them out to be? Are they set to shake the game to its very foundations?

A short perusal of the people involved in the saga reveal who are the players and who are the pawns. And maybe it could be deemed left of field but it shows how the melodrama that surrounds the case has blown everything way out of proportion; in fact it has deflected the attention away from the real culprits, the International Cricket Council.

Every cricket follower knows Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif, but when we mention the name Mazhar Majeed there is a collective cry of 'who?' Which is incredibly sad for this particular individual because he most definitely is of the opinion he is much bigger than the game itself. He has been exposed merely as a glorified used car salesman; claiming that Australia are the biggest match fixers is absurd; claiming that he is close to Hollywood royalty and other sporting superstars is downright embarrassing and even if true, who cares?

These claims, one suspects, are not his first and probably not his wildest exaggerations. The players were dumb enough to get sucked into his web and whether or not they were involved in corrupting the game they should be on trial for their denseness alone.

Yet all this is an ICC problem. They have a system in place where people like Majeed can access the teams and players too easily. It is such a simple scenario: if players are not offered bribes, they will not take bribes. The governing body needs to take its head out the sand (or the backside of Indian cricket depending on your view point) and tighten up the rules on who can become player agents and who has access to players on game days, even game week.

So that was the side of "bad" guys. Unfortunately the "good" guys do not make for better reading.

Who was it that exposed the whole rort? It was not Scotland Yard who were too busy trying to solve real world issues like murder and rape. It was not the ICC who have revealed that they had a dossier on some of the participants, but with no power to act or willingness to hurt someones feelings they sat on their hands in that holy land of cricket, Dubai.

It was in fact a English tabloid newspaper which initiated the sting.

For those who do not know what a tabloid is, here is a brief discription. Page one has a story of a drunken celebrity or a stripper claiming to have slept with a soccer player. Page two has a rant against a random politician, generally with a clever little witticism in the headline regarding said politician's physical appearance or name. Page 3 has a topless young thing dragged from a Manchurian strip club on the promise of fame and fortune; and littered all through the pages is language that is borderline racism or ouright paranoia. Their service to the community is nil.

This particular newspaper exposed the Pakistan players during August 2010. A year later and it had closed down after being exposed for its disgusting and unlawful investigation techniques. So do not think for a second that this trial is good versus evil, because it is not.

But what is important to cricket is actually the sensationalism in the claims made through the proceedings. Sifting through and discarding all the rubbish we can get to the real reason why players are succeptible to these sort of activities.

Most of the high up administrators are keen to blame the Indian government for being unable to control illegal bookmaking. How they are supposed to do this no one says, it is not like they are a country of one billion people with maybe 40 percent of that population below ther poverty line. Obviously they should be making gambling their number one priority!

And the betting figures are astounding. Claimed in another tabloid is a figure of $1 billion U.S. on a match between India and Pakistan. Halve that, because it was printed in a tabloid and it is still an incomprehensible figure. Remembering that this is the illegal aspect of wagering. The problem is too big to stamp out completely or even make a sizeable dent in.

The trial of Butt and Asif spent much time sifting through the earnings they make from cricket, and it revealed the real problem for the ICC. The Pakistan Captain, on a 10 week tour of England made made around $16 000 Australian, which extrapolates out through a whole year of touring to around $80 000. They receive performance based payments as well, but if they do not have a great year they could earn less than $100 000.

To put that into perspective, Wayne Rooney earns that amount every three days; The average AFL wage is around twice that and in the world of cricket, Australian state players earn up to $140,000.

Maybe what Butt and Asif earn (as the top bracketed Pakistan players, it must be said) is a lot of money, but take the preciousness out of that arguement and insert the realism and the amount is a pittance. Bangladesh players receive much less than that.

The ICC need to regulate this area and start channelling more money towards the players, they are internatioanl professional athletes and they deserve minimum standards. An overall increase in the average earnings, brought with some uniformity across countries will lessen the bribary enticement. After all $10 000 is a lot for someone earning $100 000; its far less when they earn half a million.

Administrators are so quick to cram in games throughout the year - a pointless tour here, an extra three matches there; they embrace 20/20 cricket like it's the saviour of the game and are quite willing to accept the new money that it generates. They need to invest much, much more in their elite players if they genuinely want to halt corruption in the game.

An added flow on effect in countries where cricket is not the number one sport is that it may give younger kids more incentive to choose the game over others. Aussie rules players who have equal amount of cricketing talent choose the winter game because they have 18 clubs willing to throw big bucks at them. Soccer players in England who cannot make it to the top flight would be eager to chance their arm. How on earth cricket could ever become popular in America with the current wage system is mind boggling.

But that is where international cricket administrators stand on the matter of corruption. They have left it to a dodgy print merchant and a local police force to do their dirty work; they have naively put it back onto players' conscience instead of remembering that a human's very existence is based on getting ahead. At best the ICC have been lax in addressing this issue, at worst, they have been dishonest with the game. It is so simple to fix, but I guess everything is when you do not have to worry about offending people.