Cricket: Sweetener deals not in the same league

By DEREK PRINGLE

Paul Condon's interim report is set to have more hits than the Beatles.

The release of the report, just as England's cricketers were enjoying a renaissance on the field, was as sobering as the early hour (6 am in Britain) it was released, and many may want something stronger than coffee when they read it.

One claim bound to catch the eye, in England at least, is that match-fixing began in county cricket during the 1970s.

Actually this is wrong by about 200 years. According to most historians, cricket as a team game became organised in the first place only as a means for wealthy 18th-century landowners to gamble.

With betting cartels in the Gulf and Asia pre-eminent in modern-day corruption, cricket appears to have gone full circle rather than taken a wrong turn, as the report implies.

When I played for Essex and England during the 1980s and early 90s, and the county championship was played over three days, deals, but not gambling, between teams in pursuit of points were commonplace.

Unlike the present-day county championship, there were no extra points available for a draw then, and most sides would risk all for a win. Any shortening of the game by rain or bad light would require some sort of sweetener to advance the match and contrive a result.

This would normally take the form of a sporting declaration, a spell of joke bowling, or both.

But back-scratching of this sort is a long way from the corruption within the international game that was exposed by the Hansie Cronje affair a year ago.

Occasionally rumours would surface, as they did over an Essex versus Lancashire match in 1991 at Old Trafford, about teams trading one match for another.

In those days, three-day championship matches over a weekend were split by a Sunday League match, a set-up subsequently known as the "Sunday sandwich."

The allegations, brought in 1994 by two Essex players, Don Topley and Guy Lovell, have twice been investigated by the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Yet evidence of their claims, that Essex sacrificed the Sunday League match to win the three-day match, has been scant.

Condon and his anti-corruption unit have interviewed many people from all over the world, but they have found hard evidence elusive.

Often, as in the case of Indian bookie Mukesh Gupta, who claims that Alec Stewart accepted money for providing information on pitches and team make-up, it is one person's word against another.

Until that can be resolved, and the big villains behind what is now supposed to be a global multi-million-dollar scam are exposed, the county cricket of yesteryear makes for an easy target.

With sponsors and spectators now returning, at England level at least, placing the problem in the past may be the easiest way of convincing them to stay.

- INDEPENDENT

Sir Paul Condon's report