It's Been A Hard Week

It's been a hard week.

Australia collapsed in less time than the World Trade Centres and with much less provocation. Cricket lost one of it's agents provocateur: one of the last voices to call in elegant reason for cool heads among the hot money. Who will demand our attention to the blindly obvious now? Who will carry the flag?

Then this ... Lord Condon, the man asked by the ICC to investigate corruption in the game told the media the news no one in the cricket world wanted to hear. According to the man who was for seven years Britian's top cop, in the 1980's and 90's match fixing at the highest level were routinely being rigged. The proliferation of one day cricket made this a relatively easy task for the crooks whose task it was to get cricketers to make bookmakers very wealthy.

Condon's assertions are the more worrying because he isn't referring to the type of incident as the Warne/Mark Waugh weather and pitch reports, or the spot fixing which has emerged as more focus was put on corruption by the ICC. His version of events indicates that match results were regularly changed at the highest levels, even up to and including World Cup games.

In Australia we have always felt content that we have been above the dark stain that fixing leaves on a players soul. As recently as a week ago I was making assertions to that end on ABC radio, siting how well our players are paid, superannuated and the close scrutiny that players are subjected to. I could have added that its not part of the Australian ethos to approach a game and not be "fair dinkum". Corruption was for those poor countries and inferior cultures.

Not according to Condon. During his time at the ICC, he found abundant evidence that players from all countries were involved in match fixing.

"There were a number of teams involved in fixing and certainly more than the sub-continent teams were involved. Every international team, at some stage, had someone doing some funny stuff," Lord Conlon told London's Evening Standard.

Every international team.

His belief is significant inroads into destroying large scale match fixing only happened after South African captain Hansie Cronje was caught by Indian police and eventually owned up to the South African King Commission that he had not only engineered the results of games but bought three of his younger players into the dirty water at the deep end of the pool. Herschelle Gibbs lost six months from his career because of it. Condon believes the follow on was enforced after that across even the sub-continent which largely eliminated the fixing of matches but eventually led to spot fixing.

Condon's credentials are impeccable and his claims bring back stories that surfaced and but were dismissed in most countries. Players like Gus Fraser made their concerns known but disbelief was part of the culture in places like Australia and England, but in South Africa their world had been shocked by the Cronje affair which made the worst things possible. The most sinister implication of this can of worms having its ring pull lid removed are claims that just won't go away as to how far betting syndicates are prepared to go.

Clive Rice, a former team mate of Cronje, has been aggressive in his claims that Cronje's death in a plane crash at the start of June in 2002 was the biggest fix of all. Rice was stirred into further action when Bob Woolmer was found dead in his room at the World Cup in the West Indies under circumstances that have never been fully or even adequately  explained. Even if this end of the claims is fanciful, we are still led back to a sober sided career policeman who spent a lot of time gathering information before opening his mouth.

Player associations have predictably reacted in defence of their members, because its them who are under immediate suspicion from Condon's allegations. Angus Porter of the English players association was critical of Condon raising these matters now and in doing so casting aspersions of a group of players who have moved on.

"Frankly it is not helpful to those trying to solve the problem now to hear those who had a go in the past offer their opinions from the sidelines," Porter said. 

The final conviction came the day after Lord Condon spoke with The Evening Standard and perhaps this is the lynch pin. In Australia and Pakistan, those who rule the game (which really means make the legal money) announced bodies within themselves to investigate corruption and make sure their players remain honest. These three events are by no means a matter of chance. For James Sutherland, finding a corrupt player would be far less of a problem than having to expose him because Australia has always stood comfortably on the high moral ground looking down with disdain on Pakistan and India as the "wet boys" of world cricket.

If Condon is right and one now suspects he is, we are left to question in Australia who we have we trusted too well. The lesson we have learned from those who have had the lid of the cookie jar slammed down on them, is that they are likely to be leading lights. Matches can't be fixed without influence and influence comes from the men near the top. Cronje and Butt are proof of those that the money men target and if we follow that thinking, there are some disturbing moments still to come, even in our own lounge rooms or public bars as we troll through odd games from the 80's and 90's and ponder. That, of course, is the worst part of this because doubt breeds contempt and once that takes hold the glorious uncertainty of sport becomes the planning of wicked men.

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It's been a hard week.