Why cricket bosses aren’t tackling match-fixing

There are a number of extraordinary features about Al Jazeera’s expose into the ongoing scourge of matchfixing in cricket, not least its amateurish attempt at protecting the identity of one of the Australians who has had the finger pointed at him.

It is not the most polished of broadcasts.

It tries to conflate different strands of stories and misdeeds — spot-fixing of internationals, pitch doctoring and pop-up T20 tournaments for betting purposes — into one coherent whole and it has a confusing effect.

It is slightly vague about the money Al Jazeera hands over to gain access and to whom, but there are enough dirty nuggets to suggest the spectre of match-fixing has never gone away, if anything it is worse.

The pitch-doctoring material is mildly interesting.

The practice of preparing bespoke pitches is global but usually done with the wishes of the home team in mind, not gamblers.

The emergence of pop-up T20 tournaments created for the sole purpose of gambling is downright tawdry, but easy to ignore because the players are generally C-list cricketers.

The real interest centres on the explosive allegations that small windows of tests involving India, England and Australia were “set”, and those playing to order were English and Australian. That was the claim from a D-Company — one of the world’s largest criminal enterprises — employee to the Al Jazeera reporter posing as a middle man for a wealthy gambler.

Al Jazeera claims both times D-Company said a 10-over spell would play out a certain way, it happened and they could have won a lot of money had they actually bet,

The ICC, which is nothing if not a PR firm, will most likely piggyback on the indifference of its two original testplaying nations and, I expect, do nothing.

though it has to be said that the last 10 overs before the end of a session, particularly if a side is batting time rather than looking to set a target, are fairly simple to predict even without cooperation from spoiled players.

However, Ed Hawkins, a gambling expert who has literally written the book on cricket match-fixing, and Chris Eaton, a sports integrity investigator of note, testify to Al Jazeera that the evidence and footage is compelling.

Australian and English cricket authorities have called it “not credible”.

Only one of these two poles can be right. There is no middle.

Judging by many of the pieces coming out of Australia and England in particular, there is a sniffy attitude towards the investigation that wouldn’t exist if it was carried out by, say, the BBC’s Panorama or the ABC.

An argument has been posited that it is unlikely English or Australian players would be involved because they earn massive salaries and don’t need the money. This is a lazy argument that ignores the very idea of a “honey trap”. It’s not about what you can afford, but about what you can’t afford to lose.

Cricket, as it happens, stands to lose plenty if these allegations have basis.

Like cycling’s governing body, the International Cricket Council has always appeared wary of looking too closely under the hood for fear of what they will find.

The ICC, which is nothing if not a PR firm, will most likely piggyback on the indifference of its two original test-playing nations and, I expect, do nothing.

They have already started the ball rolling towards nowhere by criticising Al Jazeera for not sharing their investigation pre-broadcast (seriously?) and for not immediately handing over all their unedited material.

It’s not a promising start when you attack a broadcaster for doing the job you should be doing.