Cricket might be facing the worst emergency in its history — the challenge of ridding itself of the stench of cheating and corruption. The International Cricket Council (ICC), headed by Sharad Pawar, has done the right thing in finding that Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif, and Mohammad Amir have “a really arguable case to answer,” charging them with “various offences” under Article 2 of its anti-corruption code, and suspending them pending a decision on those charges. But unless cricket's administrators act resolutely to plumb the depths of the nexus between players and rogue bookmakers and betting syndicates, crack down on laxity, and hand out exemplary punishment to everyone found guilty of corruption, the game will lose its biggest asset — the trust reposed in it by millions of fans, young and old, who love it for many things but above all for its authenticity and “glorious uncertainties.” There are already signs of mutiny by players as well as by fans against the betrayal of this trust. As far as we know, match-fixing, including its no-less crooked variant, spot-fixing, is of fairly recent origin. The world of cricket woke up to it a decade ago following the disgrace and downfall of Hansie Cronje and the banning of South African, Indian, and Pakistani players for varying periods. The response of the ICC was to constitute an Anti-Corruption and Security Unit to investigate and act against player-corruption.

The ICC's anti-corruption unit functions under serious limitations when it comes to policing and uncovering evidence. To be fair, it has raised the level of awareness among players, managers, and administrators of the game. Cricketers are now required, on pain of punishment, to report every instance of contact made by bookmakers and members of betting syndicates. How effective the preventive role is — how much temptation the system has helped resist — is hard to say. What is clear is that the ACSU needs more teeth. For a start, it must be allowed to strengthen its intelligence-gathering capabilities in ways not contemplated earlier. Betting syndicates and rogue bookmakers have extended their reach alarmingly. Fixers seem to have fairly easy access to players, and not just in South Asia. But these are merely symptoms of a deep-seated malignancy, what Mike Atherton, one of the best thinkers and writers on the game today, diagnoses as “the pervading culture” of “grasping, from administrators to players to commentators,” a culture of greed in which conflicts of interest abound and “once money is involved, anything goes.” If the disease is not tackled aggressively, root and branch, cricket lovers round the world will be hapless witnesses to the decline and fall of a wonderful game.

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