On Spot Fixing and Ethics In Cricket

[Sachinism]

Cricket, which has not been a gentleman's game for at least a generation, saw three of its brightest stars go to jail at the start of November 2011. But what did they go to jail for? Predictably, the reaction has been a mixture of hand wringing and happiness. Harsha Bhogle makes a (very ordinary) Skinnerian behaviorist point about there being "something in the environment" that made these players behave this way. With every new article, Mr. Bhogle convinces me that not ruffling feathers and delivering some safe homily has become the end of his writing. At the other end of my spectrum sits Simon Hughes, who recommends the setting up of a mixture of the Gestapo and a Fraternal Order to keep cricketers in check. Others have either been celebrating a just sentence or fretting about the sentence being either too harsh or too weak. A few others, like the Australian reporter Malcolm Conn have turned their accusing eyes on the ICC. When the story broke last year, I was uneasy about the apparent moral clarity about it within Cricket. Given that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in the UK decided to go ahead with a prosecution based on a police investigation that had nothing to do with cricket, I remain uneasy about how self absorbed some of the commentary about the case has been. The original police investigation had to do with a conspiracy to defraud bookmakers, not the viewing audience. The MCC or the ECB (or the PCB or ICC) did not charge Pakistan's captain and two bowlers with fraud - there was no claim placed before the court that these three players (in light of reporting by the News of the World) cheated the people who purchased tickets and watched that Lord's Test on TV. The CPS decided that it was in the public interest to prosecute the three cricketers and their agent. Why did they think it was in the public interest? This is far from clear. It could have simply been because betting and bookmaking are legitimate businesses in England and it is in the public interest to protect legitimate businesses. Or, it could have been a far more liberal decision, based on a perceived injustice borne by the paying public that day (even though the prosecution was not about this). Lets try a thought experiment here. Take the bookmaker (and lets leave legality aside for now, betting is legal in some countries but not in others) and replace him with another entity - an IPL franchise, a player's manager (who manages his commercial endorsement contracts, and therefore large chunks of his time), a County team, or some other team - any entity that requires a secondary commitment from the player, one that could be in potential conflict with his primary commitment to his team. Take India's tour of England last year. Could it not be argued, that by turning up for the tour under prepared and over worked, India's cricket team defrauded the people who bought tickets to watch the Tests at England's grounds, defrauded the broadcasting company that spent a large amount of effort and money to win a highly prized contract with the ECB, and the people all around the world who spent their time watching that broadcast, and following the contest. It is undeniable that playing the IPL 7 days after the World Cup Final had an adverse impact on some players' fitness. It is also undeniable that some players continued to play in the IPL even after it was clear that they were injured. It is equally undeniable that the BCCI, it its wisdom (or in its greed), agreed to a ridiculous schedule where by India were playing a Test in the West Indies less than two weeks before the start date of the first Test in England at Lord's. It is also palpably the case that players who were contracted by the BCCI on annual contracts to be available to play for India (the team), signed other contracts to be available to play for a franchise (other than BCCI) in the same year. Think of the cricket fan who sets aside time, and plans his weeks and months keeping in mind that there's going to be a great Test match in England which he would really like to watch carefully. What would he find at the start of the Lord's Test? That on the ground were two teams, one of which was demonstrably ill-prepared thanks to the deliberate actions of its employers. Did not the business of cricket defraud the sport there? Was not that fan, who expected two teams - that were teams all of the time, well prepared to play a great game of cricket, defrauded by an Indian team that could not (given the vast experience within it) have been unaware of its lack of preparation? Is it not a fraud when existing contracts are knowingly trampled over by new contracts for little other than extra money, and result in sub-standard performance, even if such contracts are legal? It is probably true, that short of willful, serious, critical scrutiny, the actions of BCCI and the many IPL franchises, could be arguably shown to be entirely legal. Given the pervasively lawyered existence that private corporations lead, they would probably defend such a charge with aplomb in a court of law and come out selling of roses. Lets set aside the courts then. Even among cricket watchers, the general answer to my question is likely to be that it didn't. This situation is typically rationalized in many ways. "Players are professionals and they are responsible for managing themselves". But this is precisely the point - the situation is rationalized. This is different from saying that it is inherently rationalizable. There are other areas in which cricket has rationalized less than ethical behavior. Most obviously, it is in the case of the Decision Review System. The existence of this system relies on an ever growing hostility between players and umpires - on the proposition that players are there to play and Umpires are there to adjudicate, and so, players have no obligation to be honest and walk when they know they're out, or not appeal when they know there isn't a dismissal there. The natural next step in this, is to then be even more hostile to Umpires who make the occasional error. The next step, is to then produce a standard of "correctness", (using some technical device like a ball-tracking system, whose flaws must of course be papered over, remember the argument - "a flawed but consistent ball tracking system is better than a human umpire") to such an extent, that human umpires cannot possibly do a good job (marginal decisions are reversed because of the protocol, not because of any actual facts) anymore. It is a good thing in my view, that cricket is unwilling to rationalize betting and bookmaking and the inevitable transgressions that history tells us follow with alarming regularity. 20th century sport is full of such instances in every known spectator sport. Arguably though, spot-fixing is a marginal transgression. Salman Butt and Pakistan were absolutely dead set on winning the Lord's Test. Those few balls were aberrations. Such a view of the Lord's Test is plausible. It could be argued, albeit more controversially, that Butt and his Pakistani's gave themselves a better chance of winning the Tests in England in 2010 than Dhoni and his Indians did in 2011. Dhoni's Indians were compromised and in some cases, irretrievably crippled by conflicts of interest before the first ball was bowled at Lord's. When things that we cannot or will not rationalize, that we will not welcome into the realm of things we consider normal, occur, it is the idea of transgression that is brought into focus. Cricket has more serious ethical problems than spot-fixing in my view, nowhere more so than in the question of its financial viability. How much money is enough money? Where does absolutely crucial political act of scheduling - choosing where and what cricket will be played, cross acceptable ethical boundaries and threaten the sport? At what point does the consideration of players as commodities threaten the players and the sport itself, and at what point does it begin to defraud viewer? At what point does the absence of trust, and the unwillingness to accept and grant responsibility in on-field decision making, threaten the very possibility of the sport? Cricket has two choices at this point. It could sit back and pretend that its only serious ethical problem has been tackled substantially, and that the jail sentences will serve as deterrents. Or, it could think seriously about other ethical transgressions, which, as I have tried to show (and which, I'm sure most serious observers of the game are already aware of) threaten the game far more fundamentally and in a far more far-reaching sense than spot fixing can. http://cricketingview.blogspot.com/2011/11/on-spot-fixing-and-ethics-in-cricket.html Its an interesting view. If it does come down to defrauding the audience, which I feel is a big thing, then India should be guilty of that too. Seriously such poor-preparation for a tour is just asking for trouble