Pakistan Taking Cash 4 No Balls

What do you make of all this?

For me, its been bloody obvious this kind of thing has been going on for years.

Hansie Cronje was just the tip of the mountin & anyone with half a ounce of common, must work out that all the illegal bookmakers in Asia & the love for a punt by their uneducated millions could only mean there were and are more than just poor ol Hansie on the take.

NOTW seem to think they have been the clever ones in exposing this 35 year old and his crop of young bowlers, but it seems there have been more than just media after these boys for sometime, with both Customs and Police in many countries working on their own cases.

I have to admit not knowing anything about the test in Australia where the wicket keeper dropped 3 and missed a run out that a village player would have made with ease. Id have said alarm bells must have been going off all around that ground after the way the pakistan captain set his field.

Its going to be very interesting how things turn out, and we must be encourged by the Pakistan people reaction, who have called for the players - if found gulity - to be hung drawn n quarted! lol.

Just one question - unless the police can hear the conversations between the 35 year old and the players on these mobile phones that have been taken from the players - how can they prove the conversations included details of the fixing of no balls?

This will shock the world of cricket for a while. Though spot fixing has been evident before, many are ignorant to it, or are happy to bury their head in the sand.

The Australia situation surprised me, because they basically threw the game. However, the 35yr old fella, allegedly is against fixing results because they actually want Pakistan to win these matches in order that the captain remains captain...for obvious reasons.

Part of me really wants to feel sorry for the young starlet that has got himself involved, Mohammed Amir, because he really has performed well in this tournament. Of course the other part of me says serves him right for getting involved.

Cricket is just too easy to allow these little fixes to happen. Those no balls could have gone completely unnoticed, although the commentators at the time did allude to how bad they were !

abcdef wrote:

Though spot fixing has been evident before, many are ignorant to it, or are happy to bury their head in the sand.

The naivety (or delusion) of the British media in particular and this need and desire to of always wanting to take a moral high ground (be it in sporting situations or social ones) is laughable as usual.

EVERY international player is aware of spot fixing and has always been aware of spot fixing, and those that have been around for a few years are aware of the influence of the sub continent betting organisations who try and fix matches as well.

Those in the know - in terms of media outlets, papers like the Telegraph and the BBC cricket team to name a couple have given some really interesting views on the subject in recent weeks.
The News of the World being the moral high point in any situation in life needs a second glimpse to believe it.

The irony is the three big sub continent teams have cleaned up their act alot and with more protection offered.

However - the money that is being offered to players because of how much money is being illeagally "betted" is ever increasing - in turn making it more tempting to refuse.
The Pakistani players know how little they earn in comparison to other teams, so anything being waved in front of their face is too tempting to refuse. That along with supidity and greed leads to this.

It is impossible for the ICC to regulate and for me, is the responsibility of the national cricket boards to protect their players.

The market in the sub continent is very powerful with multi millionaires running it. The contacts they have make it easy to infiltrate cricket at the professional level - they exploit it.

It is interesting to see the point tick has made with regards to unless the police/ICC have the actual phone conversations that took place (if they did) as nothing can be "proven" as such till then.

As for the individuals in question - the head of the ICC Haroon Lorgat has already said M. Amir is unlikely to get a life ban because of age being on his side, and there is support behind that. The skipper Butt is known as one of the easiest Pakistani players to get on with, and when his name was mentioned a lot of people were shocked that someone as seemingly down to earth as him would be involved. Not sure I know enough about Asif as a guy outside cricket, didnt affect him getting married last week tho.

Many pundits and those in the MCC want to see life bans for all three if found guilty, and in a way that is the best way to tackle it - showing a no nonsense attitude. Granted spot fixing isnt as "bad" as fixing a game, but it's no good for the integrity of the sport.

Final point - Ijaz Butt IS the biggest prick amongst all of this farce - guy needs to get shot.

Can somebody explain what "spot fixing is"

Taking a certain aspect of the game and trying to "fix" that.

For example - as you can bet in football on real small aspects such as corners, yellow cards, fouls, first goal etc - you can in cricket as well - in this case the bets were on "no balls" a bowler bowls.

So in this case bets were apparently made at a specific time that a bowler would bowl a "no ball" - the bowlers were told to bowl at that specific time so those who made bets of thousands of pounds would then make more money.

I'm not sure that makes sense...

Might be easier just to say that spot fixing revolves around fixing small insignificant parts of the game.

Would never affect a result, such as the bowling of the odd no ball at a precise time. Almost unpredictable unless you know when they are coming

what he said ^

Spot fixing in Cricket is purely aimed at the Asian betting markets.

While you can place bets on this kind of thing here in the UK, Bookmakers say it makes up the tiniest of % of their Cricket betting market.

You might have noticed, our bookmakers have not offered any stats to show they have been hit by spot fixing.