Match and Spot-Fixing - a Great Cricket Scandal!

A positive move from the South African cricketing authorities as they charge, as yet, an unknown male individual, for attempted
match-fixing during the recent 'Ram-Slam' T20 tournament.

sbeta.iol.co.za/sport/cricket/domestic/csa-mum-over-match-fixing-1961274

Back in October, the same authorities alongside help from the ICC, were also scrutinising claims that an international syndicate were
attempting to match-fix general domestic South African cricket matches. It is unclear whether any progress has been made
with these allegations, although charging the unknown male may be a part of the investigation.

sbeta.iol.co.za/sport/cricket/domestic/csa-to-probe-match-fixing-attempts-1942104

And now it's happening in Sri Lanka.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-35136167

You beat me to it s and f! What a wonderful job it must be, to be the head of the Cricket Australia Integrity Unit and to strut around pour encourager les autres.
Bet that sends a shiver down the spine of all those players present and recently-retired who have made a nonsense of "Integrity".

And in Sri Lanka, the fast bowling coach is suspended after "...bringing in a man with no top-level cricketing experience to help the squad at training sessions", bent on fixing a Test against the West Indies. Despite the best efforts of the fixer the batting collapse didn't happen and West Indies were defeated by an innings.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/35345177

What does bookies sponsoring sport have to do with the scandal? If you cut ties with bookie sponsors do you people honestly think it will stop gangsters from trying to corrupt sports people and then bet on it? How? It's as if your only argument is some sort of moral stance, a moral stance which carries absolutely no effectiveness at all.

There's only one way to completely eradicate it - ban gambling. That ain't gonna happen so we just have to hope that everyone will reject and report when approached. Not all the low earners will of course and 'shady' people in all walks of life is as natural as the green grass.

What's depressing is when sporting bodies try to protect their reputation by playing down these problems. Then when the **** hits the fan, their credibility is totally shot. When will they realise that the way to protect a sport's reputation is to go hard after the cheats, and to tell the world that this is what they're doing. 

I guess there are parallels with churches and child abuse.

Indeed and with all such monolithic institutions that feel that their antiquity or former magnificence lends them immunity from the normal processes of the law and morality. You can see it in the initial responses of the Conservative party to the complaints about bullying in its youth organisation; in the attitude of those who own utility companies to concerns about their pricing and environmental policies; in the shoddy history of the Metropolitan police handling of the Stephen Lawrence case and others. It is a mixture of a desperate concern with preserving reputational integrity and an almost hysterical contempt for those who would dare to question the organisation. In every case the institution suffers because the latter attitude ensures the very thing that they wish to avoid, and the more grievously than if they had treated the initial concerns openly.

Sporting bodies are particularly prone to this kind of ethical shilly-shallying, hiding behind the shelter of the brand, the prestige and the desperate urgency to keep the sponsors happy and their money rolling in. It suited them to present the image of the old amateur style, the "great tradition" and the boardroom with the silver cups and shields, the debenture seats and blazers rampant when they came to market and did business with the sporting goods companies. Adidas, Nike, Sports Direct and all the others could bask a little in the walnut glow of the clubhouse furnishings, putting another barrier up themselves from unwelcome investigation into their unsavoury child-exploitation in Asian factories, whilst the old buffers could pretend that they had improved their sport and their own stewardship by successful alliance with modern marketing.  In practice one set of pimps was handing over the keys of the brothel to a younger, meaner mob and protesting that they had no involvement in this shameless trade in flesh.

Against this background it is no wonder that corruption grows wherever there is a market to be made. One of the worst policies introduced by any British government was the deregulation of gambling advertising in 2007 following the 2005 Gambling Act. The stifling hypocrisy of the "I'm a responsible gambler" ads cloaks the fact that for many people there is no responsibility in gambling, and massive temptation to influence outcomes, rising in direct relationship to the prestige of the sport and the money available.

I'm proud of the 4th estate and the rekindling of proper investigative journalism. After the phone hacking scandal and the Murdoch
gutter press, one hopes this once noble art is rising again like a reborn phoenix via these series of sports corruption horrors.

I was inspired by the Watergate Scandal and Bernstein and Woodward. Hopefully, younger journalists today are being motivated by
the fantastic work carried out by reporters from the Sunday Times and the German broadcaster ARD/WDR, who were responsible
for bringing the athletics doping shame to the world. The author/journalist Andrew Jennings whose published book in 2006 started
the drip-drip of the FIFA revelations. And now journalists from the BBC and BuzzFeed News who have begun a similar process with
the tennis match-fixing. Not forgetting Mazher Mahmood and the cricket cheating.

What becomes so tedious is the bog-standard process that sporting authorities go through when under threat.

First, DENIAL; then the SILENCE; followed by the COVER UP; then when investigative journalism brings evidence to the surface the
downplaying and 'on a tiny scale' phrase; followed by DEFENSIVENESS, further REVELATIONS and eventual SHAME.

The establishment has always been corrupt to its core as it protects each other and always will do. Vested interests rule the roost
and one suspects today's establishment is at a tipping point as more and more scandals and corruption come to the surface. There
is a cleansing going on and a much needed one. Some suggest this is just a tip of the iceberg with the really HUGE scandals still
to manifest.

If true, then the next 25 years could be very rocky indeed.