Spot fixing is back in the news. Three players in the Pakistan Super League have been suspended, others questioned. There is an uncomfortable feeling that it never went away but merely got more sophisticated, with the offenders staying one step ahead of the detectors.
For India, what is worrying is not that anybody has been caught recently, but that even if one had been, there is no law yet to deal with such cases. When the law is no deterrent, temptations are more attractive, and risk-takers are more willing to play (or not) for a few dollars more. You cannot, of course, legislate against human greed, but you can make it less profitable to give in to it.
At the turn of this century, Indian cricket went through the trauma of the National skipper and a few of his colleagues being banned for match-fixing.
National outrage
Despite the national outrage, it was seen as a victimless crime: no one was injured, none killed. What was destroyed — briefly — was faith, an important element that moves mountains and is the essence of competitive sport.
Match-fixing wasn’t a crime in India, and players caught had to be tried under the provisions of “cheating”. It was important, said commentators, experts, Parliamentarians, law enforcement authorities, to pass a law dealing specifically with fixing in sport.
Yet, more than a decade and a half later, we have no such law. If a player were to be caught spot fixing today, he would most probably get away with it because of this.
To try Sreesanth under the dreaded MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) was both desperate and futile. He was, naturally, cleared under that law, and equally naturally, went about saying he had been cleared of spot fixing. You cannot be guilty of a crime that does not exist in the system.
Following the 2013 spot fixing scandal, the trial judge discharged all 36 accused saying the offence “pertains to betting and match-fixing which does not fit in any penal statute.”
Earlier, in 2012, Mohammad Azharuddin was “cleared” by the Andhra Pradesh High Court. But the court had merely said that the BCCI ban was unfair, not that the player was innocent of match-fixing, something he had confessed to, according to the CBI report.
Every time such a scandal erupts, there is much breast-beating. Why don’t we have a law? Why can’t offenders be jailed? How can we allow this desecration of the sanctity of sport? Editorials are written, experts go on television panels asking these and other questions.
Meanwhile the Prevention of Sporting Fraud Bill (2013) which had fixed jail terms and fines for match fixing has already dropped out of the public consciousness. The current government which had pushed for its passage when it was in the opposition seems to have abandoned it.
The Bill personally affects politicians of all parties who are office bearers in the various State and National sports bodies. The age and tenure limitations (now successfully adapted by the Lodha Committee in cricket) ensured that.
The 2013 Bill proposed to create “sporting fraud” as a special category of offence, which included the manipulation of result, deliberate under-performance, disclosure of inside information, and failure to report an offence. The average follower of sports might welcome these steps to criminalise match-fixing. In 2015 the Bill went to the Cabinet for consideration. And that was that.
A rehash of that bill, the National Sports Ethics Commission Bill, was introduced in 2016, but its wider sweep and possibly incomplete definitions and somewhat disproportionate punishments might make its progress difficult.
But within these attempts and earlier ones like the Prevention of Dishonesty in Sports Bill (2001) lie the kernel of a specific bill aimed at criminalising fixing in sport.
There have been attempts to move sports from the State list to the concurrent list, a move that was hailed in 1988 when it was first proposed. That bill, however, was withdrawn in 2009. Last year the Sports Minister garnered the support of the national sports federations and later the sports ministers in the States and we may be closer to such a shift than at any time in the recent past.
Uniformity
It will allow for a certain uniformity in sports administration in the country, a move that has become increasingly important thanks to the rise in sports sponsorships as well as the jump in television revenues.
It might also help in the acceptance of a sports fraud bill aimed at dealing with match fixing (there is no moral difference with spot fixing).
At its simplest, any attempt to “manipulate a sports result, irrespective of whether the outcome is altered or not” as the 2013 Bill says, ought to result in a jail term.
Details can be worked out. But the broad picture needs to be pursued. Indian cricket has been embarrassed too many times for the problem of fixing to be ignored. We have waited long enough.
