Should Pakistan be suspended to save world cricket?

whether pakistan should be suspended to save cricket


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johnee

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We see yet another controversy in Pakistan cricket. Pakistan cricket and controversy go hand in hand but this time the controversy is not limited to Pakistan team or Pakistan cricket. This issue impacts world cricket. Some of prominent pakistani players are being probed by scotland yard over spot-fixing allegations. An english tabloid conducted a sting operation and exposed how pakistani players were bowling no-balls in a test match after taking money from a fixer. The fixer allegedly boasted that he had upto 7 pakistani cricketers in his pocket and the ringleader was none other than the new caption Salman Butt.

The fixer was taken under custody by Scotland yard and under the custody he sung like a canary revealing many dirty secrets of Pakistani cricket. He revealed that this was not a sudden or random phenomenon. Infact, this was the routine of Pakistani cricket. The fixer Mazhar Majeed revealed that not only were the Pakistani cricketers involved in spot fixing but also in match fixing. He told Scotland Yard that Sydney Test in this year's janaury was fixed. And the syndicate were making huge amounts of profit thanks to the Pakistani cricketers. He puts the number at 830000 pounds in just one test.

But all this does not come as a surprise to any follower of Pakistani cricket. There were strong rumors that Sydney match was fixed. The pakistani players themselves were making these charges against their colleagues. PCB even conducted some enquiry but gave their cricketers a clean chit. PCB's callous attitude is not limited to this one occasion. Mohd Asif, pakistani fast bowler, was caught in a drug scandal and was detained in Dubai. After many backdoor negotiations he was allowed to return to his country. Such tainted individuals were brought back into the team by the PCB. It is little surprise that Mohd Asif is also involved in the present fixing allegations. He had delivered a huge no-ball at the exact point of match which the fixer had identified one night before. One may wonder how someone like Mohd Asif who has just escaped prison can again commit another serious offence in such short time in such a brazen manner. Perhaps, because Pakistani cricketers have a feeling that they are immune. They have seen how punishments handed out by PCB in the past were reversed with in a very short span of time. So, they have become very casual with it. They perhaps believe that PCB will wink and nod as long as they are not caught. And if they are ever caught, then they will be given some kinds of strict punishment to pacify the public sentiment. And as some time passes, they will brought back to a hero's welcome.

PCB's consistent soft stand with its player has allowed them to ruin not just Pakistan cricket but cricket on a whole. The entire game of cricket is under disrepute. But why has the ICC and other boards tolerated this non-sense? Simple, Pakistan is too big to fail as far as cricket is concerned. Cricket is played by a limited number of nations. Even in those nations where the cricket is played, the audience is not always passionate. Sub-continent has come be the home of cricket for sometime now. After India, Pakistan is the country with largest number of cricket fans. BCCI the most powerful board in Cricketing world also needs the votes of PCB. Therefore, BCCI has protected PCB. So, cricketing community has given a very long rope to Pakistan cricket inspite of knowledge about Pakistan's dirty games. But now a nadir has been reached. The audience is losing their faith in the game. The followers of the sports do not know anymore whether the century scored by a batsman was due to his talent or due to the opposing team's games. Every ball and every run is under suspect. The guardians of the cricket have to take extra-ordinary measures in these times to restore the audience trust in the game. Otherwise the cricket is sure to be dead sooner than later.

Pakistan cricket has been in news a lot recently. It has been in news for the retiring of its players and their subsequent return from the retirement. It has been in the news for ball-biting by Shahid Afridi. It has been the news for Kamran Akmal's dropped catches which have been cofirmed to be part of match-fixing by the fixer Majeed. But never has any serious action taken against any culprits because the board of cricket in Pakistan is also hand in glove. Thus, the best thing for the world cricket would be to suspend Pakistan for 3 or more years to send a strong message to everyone concerned. Cricket has to take serious steps against match-fixing, spot-fixing, and even ball tampering. Yes, ball tampering is another serious offence that the Pakistan team routinely indulges in according to the fixer. Shahid Afridi may prefer biting off the ball. But according to fixer, the modus operandi of the team is not that. The fixer Majeed says that he often brought drinks to the players on the field and during this time, he would rub lots of vaseline to his hand. Then he would shake hands with the pakistani bowlers transfering the vaseline to their hands. Then the Pakistani bowlers would non-chalantly apply the vaseline on the ball making it swing immediately. Using this trick, he says, the pakistan team has gotten out of may difficult situations on the field.

So, suspend Pakistan from playing cricket at international level and hand out lifebans to the players who are caught to cleanse cricket. There is already a precedent. South Africa was not allowed to play cricket as it practiced apartheid. If a country can be stopped from playing cricket for non-cricketing reasons, then surely a country can be stopped from playing cricket for cricketing reasons.

Give your opinions.
 
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nitesh

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What cricket? One thing people need to understand is:

Give peace a chance............. destroy Pakistan.
 

johnee

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Pehle cricket baad mein peace... :). Nitesh can you add a poll asking people whether pakistan should be suspended to save cricket with options yes or no.
 

pankaj nema

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Yes it looks like this time pakistan will not escape easily. The international matches of last two years are now going to be reopened for investigation Something will happen suspension for a while
 

johnee

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So quick reaction?! Has anybody even read what I wrote...? :(
 

dineshchaturvedi

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What cricket? One thing people need to understand is:

Give peace a chance............. destroy Pakistan.
LOL, well Pakistani's are not that bad but, I feel there problem is conspiracy theories are so rampant in Pakistan that they have lost a sense of what is real and what is fake.
 

pankaj nema

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So quick reaction?! Has anybody even read what I wrote...? :(
The cricket lovers know BY HEART what the pakistanis have been doing for several years now
Well pakistani cricketing sins' matka is now full.

In hindi we say paap ka ghada bhar gaya.
 

deepak75

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There is a better use for the opportunity rather than banning them.

Pakistanis bring up about one such incident every year and get examples made. It is better for the class to have the jester because more people do not learn from their own mistakes but from that of others. The Jester gives the class this opportunity.....

Let the Pakistanis commit these mistakes that they have made their destiny and at least the world can learn from them by being reminded regularly of the ills that could beget them if they go down the Pakistani road.....
 

Solid Beast

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We need to solve our corruption and security problems (never happening) and put cricket aside from now, so that we can appoint the right people and hold these thieves up to the world as a sacrifice. Later we might be able to hold accountable the people who created, and still aid extremist groups today like Afghan Taliban as well as TTP with links to Al Qaeda. Doesn't anyone remember Daniel Pearl? Al Qaeda got him and then our cops reluctantly took out their asset. Our terror breeding and cricket corruption sort of do go hand in hand. It's visibly there but no one has the courage to speak about it. Though when the heavies come rolling in they sing like canaries. Send in the heavies.
 

Solid Beast

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And by the look and speech of some our players no doubt some of this huge theft loot is finding its way into extremist militant organizations. How much blood is on who's hands, only a made up "God" knows. If they fix matches, do they fix terrorist operations too? Perhaps they had prior knowledge. Strip these fools naked and beat the truth out of them with a cricket bat. The whole team including the captain.
 

ajtr

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Simple answer is No.Why punish country of 170 million people just for the mistakes of few.Its like saying ban india from all world bodies for CWG corruption
 

johnee

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SB: very valid angle.

meanwhile...

Cricket meets its match: history of fixing the product of a corrupt society



It is only natural that cricketers - or some of them at least - should reflect the society from which they come. And Pakistan is, and has been almost throughout its existence, riddled with corruption.

Revealed: Sydney Test linked to betting scandal

England supporters - and westerners in general - may tut-tut and disapprove of Pakistan, from its cricketers who have been implicated in match-fixing over more than two decades to its president, Asif Zardari, who chose to flaunt his wealth while the country he is supposed to rule was flooded. But, uncomfortable truth be told, Britain and the United States have complied with the governments of Pakistan in the basic form of corruption which pervades the country and derails society.
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Accused ... Mohammad Aamer

Accused ... Mohammad Aamer Photo: Getty Images

The military takes most of the country's wealth, leaving far too little money to fund civilian society: a euphemism for saying the state does not provide its people with schools and hospitals or any real social care.

In his book Pakistan - Eye of the Storm, the former BBC correspondent Owen Bennett-Jones wrote: "Between 1947 and 1959 up to 73 per cent of Pakistan's total government spending was devoted to defence. The average for the period was 60 per cent." And nothing had changed by the last time England toured Pakistan at the end of 2005. The British High Commission then estimated that Pakistan's military - including the notorious Inter-Services Intelligence - took 70 per cent of government spending for itself. No doubt official disapproval has been expressed, in private, but the aid has continued to pour in from Britain and the US without sufficient strings attached.

Anyone growing up in such a country therefore sees the state doing nothing for its people, feels no loyalty to the state in return, and makes what money he can for himself. And it is very difficult for someone in Pakistan, if not quite impossible, to make a decent living by honest means: what money there is does not go where it should but into official pockets.

My first experience of this was on England's 1977-8 tour of Pakistan. The Raj left behind some lovely hotels, Dean's, Flashman's, Faletti's, and they were all run down, apparently unrenovated since Partition. The money the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation received from government never went into the hotels which it owned.

For cricketers growing up amid corruption, the temptations are increased by Pakistan being the neighbours of India. Indian cricketers are well paid by their board, and lavishly sponsored. Pakistan players have always been poorly paid by their board, and sponsorship has never made good the difference as the country does not have the industry and private-sector economy which India has.

Pakistan's dressing room is unusual. The first language is not English and Muslim prayers are said and Ramadan, as now, observed. It has been hierarchical too. Traditionally the captain has lorded it over his team, like Imran Khan or Inzamam ul-Haq. The junior player has to conform, without allowance for individualism, to keep his place.

Not surprisingly, cricket match-fixing first reared its head in Pakistan. The inquiries by Justice Qayyum, even though the penalties were watered down by Pakistan's government to reduce international embarrassment, and by India's Central Bureau of Investigation, chronicle some of the nefarious activities which spread from 1980.

They were partly driven by human greed as well as the inequality of Pakistan society. But understandable human weakness was at play too. If you were a cricketer who worked part-time for a bank that collapsed, and some of the people whom you had persuaded to open accounts at that bank wanted their money back, and fast, or else your family would suffer: what would most of us do?

As Lord Condon, the first head of the International Cricket Council's Anti Corruption and Security Unit, told us earlier this year in a rare interview: the bad boys know perfectly how to entrap. Down the slippery slope the young cricketer goes, accepting the odd gift, and then money, in return for more and more important information, until he is one of the boys. And he is only following the example of his seniors, if not betters.

Sexual entrapment has been used as well. There is no going back to an honest life if you have taken the money, or if you have been photographed in a compromising position in a Dubai hotel. Especially for players from a Muslim country.

And it is not like the good old days of the 1820s when Lord's was not so much the home of cricket as of gambling, and dodgy fellows/lovable rogues propositioned players as they went in and out of the pavilion.

The trail leads from corrupt cricketers through middlemen back to the biggest mafia bosses in south Asia, to men who have cut their teeth - and more than a few throats - in the Bollywood film industry. To men who are No.1 on Wanted Lists. In them cricket has met its match.
 

pankaj nema

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And by the look and speech of some our players no doubt some of this huge theft loot is finding its way into extremist militant organizations. How much blood is on who's hands, only a made up "God" knows. If they fix matches, do they fix terrorist operations too? Perhaps they had prior knowledge. Strip these fools naked and beat the truth out of them with a cricket bat. The whole team including the captain.
It looks that Pakistani people are also very angry this time. There was a report that In London, British- pakistanis pelted tomatoes on the players.

If ICC is forced to take a harsh step like suspension ,then the current players will definitely get a "SPANKING"
from the people back home
 

Solid Beast

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It looks that Pakistani people are also very angry this time. There was a report that In London, British- pakistanis pelted tomatoes on the players.

If ICC is forced to take a harsh step like suspension ,then the current players will definitely get a "SPANKING"
from the people back home
No one should be above the law. Regardless of valid international repercussions and consequences. Frankly this amount of money is more than what a cricketer living and eating in Pakistan needs. A few thousand dollars is enough for them to live like Lt. Generals. full with security service and fleet of cars yet they are making much much more. For sure terrorism could also be benefiting here.
 

deepak75

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It looks that Pakistani people are also very angry this time. There was a report that In London, British- pakistanis pelted tomatoes on the players.

If ICC is forced to take a harsh step like suspension ,then the current players will definitely get a "SPANKING"
from the people back home
Anger is always their first reaction.
Second will be abdication of blame on the easiest goat available = Probably the Pakistan Government or the President or the team Janitor.
Third will be conspiratorial thinking = Pakistanis cannot do this. This has to be an Indian conspiracy for some reason.
Fourth, there will be a demand for a revolution and they will ask Kiyani's son (or something similar) to start playing for Pakistan because he can be the only honest man in Pakistan.....
And lastly, once the feeling has sunk it, they will say, "so what, even the Indians do it in IPL" or some other way of justifying what happended and its acceptability.

This has been sixty something years of evolution so I think by now, should be quite predictable.
 

johnee

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SB, you are right.

One of the famous cases is Javed Miandad. He is a relative of Dawood Ibrahim.
Dawood Ibrahim's daughter Mahrukh Ibrahim married Junaid Miandad the son of a former Pakistan National Cricket Team captain, Javed Miandad.[27] Miandad told the press that his son and Ibrahim's daughter met while studying together in the UK.[28]
If someone is not aware of Dawood Ibrahim. Heres some info from wiki:
Dawood is currently on the wanted list of Interpol for organised crime and counterfeiting, besides association with Al-Qaeda as identified in UN Security Council resolutions 1822 (2008) and 1267 (1999).[2] He was No. 4 on the Forbes 2008 list of The World's 10 Most Wanted criminals,
After the 1993 Bombay bombings, which Ibrahim allegedly organized and financed, he became India's most wanted man.[4] According to the United States, Ibrahim maintains close links with al-Qaida's Osama bin Laden.[5] As a consequence, the United States declared Dawood Ibrahim a "global terrorist" in 2003
 

johnee

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It seems like D-company is also involved in this case. This means the rot does not end with just few players. It must be touching to the top of the hierarchy.

Mumbai bookies in Rs 1,500-cr fix

City punters want to call off all bets involving the controversial Lord's Test, but fear pressure from D-Company which wants them to honour payments

The spot-fixing scandal in the fourth Test match at Lord's between Pakistan and England, involving some leading Pakistani players, has put Mumbai-based bookies in a spot. After a sting operation by the British tabloid News of the World exposed the alleged nexus between players and bookies yesterday, city's punters feel that all bets placed on the match should be made null and void.



However, non-payment of bets or sauda fok, as punters call it, may not be possible. With Rs 1,500 crore riding on the fourth and final match of the Test series between England and Pakistan, bookies fear interference by members of the Dawood Ibrahim gang.

"The D-Company may force us to honour payments, as most of the bets have been won by those bookmakers, who have nexus with their Pakistani counterparts. It now appears that they were clued in about the match fixing," said a punter, requesting anonymity.

Dawood's men have pressured Indian bookies to honour payments in the past, despite them agreeing on a sauda fok. Most of these matches involved the Pakistani cricket team, say insiders.

Cheated
In fact, the scandal, which has rocked Pakistani cricket, may also strain relations between desi bookmakers and those across the border and in Dubai.

"We will take a final call on this later, but we now feel cheated," remarked a top bookie from Ghatkopar.

Another bookie, who did not wish to be named, said that he and his colleagues were suspecting that they were being defrauded by bookies overseas when England went on to win the match after being 102/7 on the second day of the Test match, which started on Thursday (Aug 26).

"Our fear was confirmed when Scotland Yard detectives arrested Mazhar Majeed, an alleged middleman who paid bribes to the Pakistani players to bowl no-balls in the Lord's Test," he said.

Bookies also suspect that Mumbai-based punter Shoban Kalachowkie got wind of how Pakistani players were paid to underplay during the match.

According to sources, Kalachowkie has teamed up with another kingpin Govinda Kolkata and hawala dealings worth crores with the underworld in Dubai and Pakistan has made them financially sound.

"The duo will make crores from this bet, as they were aware of the spot-fixing. However, they fear a sauda fok because then they will not get any money. Hence the D-Company is against our decision of non-payment. But this is unfair," remarked SS, a bookie. "Dawood never honours payments if he or his associate bookies lose bets. Betting on Pakistani team has always been tricky."

Dawood vs Rajan
Coming to the rescue of Indian bookies may be Dawood's rival Chhota Rajan. A bookmaker, who goes by the name Pali, is providing protection to bookies operating in Thane, Navi Mumbai and northern suburbs of Mumbai.

More than 20 per cent to the turnover in these areas is shared by Rajan's cronies, say sources.

"There is a strong possibility that Rajan's men may enforce sauda fok. This could mean no payment of money by the Indian bookies to Dawood's aides," say bookies.
 

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