were 155 for six. A number of suggestions for making something from nothing had already been dismissed by the administrators. South Africa had already won the series so there was nothing at stake in that regard and, strongly persuaded by Cronje, the England captain, Nasser Hussain, agreed to forfeit England’s first innings in exchange for South Africa reaching a pre-agreed total of 250 and forfeiting their second innings in order to set up the prospect of an interesting day’s cricket. This went down very well with the thousand or so England supporters who had made the trip and who were mighty frustrated, and it was hailed from the press and commentary boxes as a great day for cricket. Not everyone agreed, particularly those who had an interest in horse racing. Mike Atherton was a dissenter within the England ranks, while Sir Ian Botham and the journalist Jack Bannister were vociferous in their disapproval behind the scenes. Effectively, the draw – a nailed-on certainty – was suddenly made vulnerable, and this caused alarm in legitimate betting circles where the book had already been closed.
Under the contrived arrangement, England were set 249 to win, which they achieved with just two wickets and five balls remaining, ensuring that the spectators had their entertainment. However, what was known only to Cronje was that, on the evening before the final day, he was approached by a South African bookmaker, Marlon Aronstam, who offered to give 500,000 rand (approximately £33,300) to the charity of Cronje’s choice if he declared to make a game of it. When the match was over, Aronstam gave Cronje two payments totalling 50,000 rand (£3,300) and a leather jacket.
Although a large number of South Africans refused point blank to believe a word of the evidence against their national hero, Cronje’s fall from grace was dramatic and ultimately tragic. On 1 June 2002, aged 32, he died in a plane crash in mountains near George in South Africa. Inevitably, conspiracy theories flourished in the immediate aftermath, and then again in 2007 when Bob Woolmer – who had been Cronje’s coach and confidant – was found dead in his Jamaican hotel room. Woolmer was coach of Pakistan at the time, and his team had just been knocked out of the World Cup at the earliest opportunity as a result of a surprise loss to Ireland. The inquests recorded death by pilot error in Cronje’s case, but returned an open verdict in Woolmer’s, which left open the possibility that he had been murdered. However, a review of the case by Scotland Yard determined that Woolmer had died of natural causes, most probably a heart attack.
Aware of the damage that was being done to the integrity of the game, the ICC set about tackling the most serious issue the game had ever faced. An anti-corruption unit was set up, which brought in a raft of stringent measures designed to increase awareness among the players and also to make contact with bookmakers more difficult. A zero-tolerance policy was introduced, leaving no one in any doubt that corrupt players would be heavily punished. It was widely accepted, however, that spot-fixing, in particular, would be very difficult to prove. This might involve the number of runs scored by a team during a specified passage of play in a one-day match, or even the outcome of a single delivery. A bowler delivering a wide or no-ball to order is all that is required for bookies to make a killing on the cricket-crazy, illegal betting markets on the Indian subcontinent.
Allegations of match-fixing, in which games were deliberately thrown by the majority of a team, went quiet after Cronje’s case because of the increased awareness of administrators, umpires and the media. However, this probably allowed spot-fixing to proliferate as the bookies were forced to change their approach. Cricket had lost its innocence in that the simplest dropped catch, inexplicable run-out or mysteriously slow innings now raises eyebrows. But it is one thing to harbour a suspicion in the commentary box, and quite another to make a serious allegation against a professional cricketer who might be guilty of nothing more than making a mistake.
The tour of England by the Pakistan team in the summer of 2010 provided a significant victory in the battle against corruption, although it took a sting by the Sunday tabloid newspaper the News of the World to bring it about. Sharp-eyed commentators working at the Lord’s Test – the final match of the summer – were surprised to see Mohammad Amir, the 18-year-old swing bowler, deliver two no-balls. But these were not ordinary no-balls: he overstepped the crease by a remarkable distance, and yet still released the ball, something that was impossible to explain.
It all became clear on the Sunday morning, which was the final day of the match, when the News of the World exposed the set-up in which an agent, Mazhar Majeed, was seen accepting £150,000 from the undercover reporter. The deal was that Majeed would arrange for three no-balls to be delivered to order, two by Amir and one by Mohammad Asif. Sure enough, the no-balls were bowled precisely as specified, and the Pakistan captain, Salman Butt, was revealed as the man who had passed the instructions to his bowlers.
The evidence appeared to be conclusive, and this was the verdict of the ICC, which conducted a disciplinary hearing despite the ongoing criminal investigation. All three players were found guilty and, on 5 February 2011, received lengthy bans – Butt for ten years, with five suspended; Asif seven years, with two suspended; and Amir five years. The players maintained their innocence, but in November 2011 were found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of conspiracy to cheat at gambling and conspiracy to receive corrupt payments. Butt was jailed for two and a half years, Asif for one year and Amir for six months. The agent, Majeed, was imprisoned for two years eight months. The case was seen as a watershed moment in the battle that every sport faces against corruption, and it forced Pakistan’s authorities finally to take seriously the long-held view that its cricket team was more exposed to corruption than any other.
However, there was a shock in store for followers of county cricket when, in January 2012, a young Essex fast bowler, Mervyn Westfield, pleaded guilty to accepting £6,000 to deliberately under-perform in a match against Durham in 2009. He was imprisoned for four months after alleging in court that he had been persuaded to accept the bribe by the Pakistan and Essex leg-spinner, Danish Kaneria, who had been initially arrested with Westfield. Kaneria was released without charge, and denies Westfield’s allegations. However, the case underlines the extent to which corruption has infiltrated the game of cricket and that, potentially, any match televised live to the Indian subcontinent is at risk.
Why is it that cricket has attracted so many controversies over its relatively short life? Racism, corruption, politics – the great game has endured more than its fair share of issues, all of which have threatened its welfare. At least part of the answer must lie in the fact that it is a traditional sport founded upon a strict moral code of fair play and sporting conduct. Any threat to those principles is big news, and I am quite convinced that cricket crises – particularly of the political variety – make bigger headlines even than football crises because of the game’s historical links with the Commonwealth.
It is a fact that cricket has at times played a crucial role in shaping the world in which we live. This is plain to see in the D’Oliveira crisis, which made a nonsense of the often cowardly ambition of many to keep sport separate from politics. Separating the two is almost impossible to achieve and, besides, when you consider the dismantling of apartheid, sport – and cricket in particular – made a significant contribution. The D’Oliveira affair led directly to the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement in which Commonwealth leaders agreed to boycott all sporting contact with South Africa as part of the international fight against apartheid. Supporters of the rebel cricket tours that broke that agreement will say that the English XI tour in 1990, led by Mike Gatting, played a part in speeding up the end of the reviled political system in South Africa. It did, but not because it was the right thing to do. The ill-timed and insensitive tour was a financial disaster for the South African Cricket Union, coinciding as it did with the unbanning of the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. The tour became a focal point for demonstrators – Gatting famously admitted to hearing a ‘few people singing and dancing’ outside his hotel – and it quickly became obvious that the tour was unsustainable, and was called off.
Sport and politics are inextricably linked, but the type of sustained pressure that worked against South Africa does not work in every situation. It would not, for example, have made the slightest impression on Robert Mugabe’s
