Game has work to do on fix fight

CRICKET never takes long to shoot down a match-fixing story. Sadly, the game has never been as quick to catch people who actually did it.

In fact, it barely catches anyone. Within hours of the London Sun newspaper breaking the match-fixing allegations that rocked the cricket world, the game had jumped to its own defence.

The logic was impossible to argue with … why would players on $2 million disgrace their countries by taking small fees to corrupt the game’s greatest series? Sheer logic tells us no player would take money to tinker with the Ashes.

But beneath the frantic denials, there is a worrying subplot the game cannot deny.

The match-fixing forces are still out there and their brazenness is shuddering.

That three international captains have been approached in recent months is cause for major concern.

Cricket’s multimillion-dollar anti-corruption unit has been in existence since 2000 and has netted a disturbing low number of scalps – including low-profile Kenyan captain Maurice Odumbe, West Indian Marlon Samuels and New Zealand’s Lou Vincent – from their own investigations.

The Sun story was being branded lightweight but it was no wacky kite-flying exercise.

The paper spent a lot of money going to Delhi on a tip.

They were told where to go to find men corrupting cricket and duly found them, however obscure they were and abstract their plans. An Ashes approach would defy trends because normally the smaller the game, the more brazen the fix.

Cricket can huff and puff all it likes about the war against match fixing but deep down it knows that it is a battle it has never really managed to win.