Editorial: Court siding no business for the police

General view of Hagley Oval during an ICC Cricket World Cup. Photo / Getty Images

It’s odd that this gambling practice attracted such a heavy hand when it isn’t actually illegal in this country

Cricket followers were introduced to a new practice, court-siding, during the opening Cricket World Cup match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka. The attempt to stamp out this activity, named for its initial use at tennis tournaments, saw police officers, some in plain clothes, patrolling the Hagley Oval in search of spectators using lap-tops or constantly on their cellphones. Later, they revealed that "several" people caught court-siding had been interviewed and removed from the ground. This for an activity that is not actually illegal in this country.

Given that, there is every reason to question the police involvement. This has been highlighted by AUT senior law lecturer Craig Dickson. Court-siding's only offence, he noted, was that it breached the terms and conditions of World Cup tickets, as prescribed by the International Cricket Council. On that basis, it seems reasonable to conclude that any transgressions should be left to the security staff employed by the ICC.

Cricket governors have their reasons for acting against court-siding. The reputation of the game, already tarnished by match-fixing and spot betting, is further undermined by the practice, which involves people at matches relaying information to others overseas, taking advantage of broadcasting time delays to manipulate betting.

The main market is India, where odds may be attached to how many runs are scored in, say, a five-over bracket. Pre-broadcast advice of a boundary being scored is, obviously, of considerable advantage to either gamblers or bookmakers.

As much as the ICC is keen to clean up the image of the game, this is not an offence that can be readily compared with match-fixing. With good reason, the latter was made illegal in this country last year. It is difficult, however, to envisage legislation that would make it a criminal offence for people at a sports stadium to relay information on their cellphones. In most cases, the destination of such calls are friends and family.

The police have attempted to defend their intervention. They say that they are seeking to ensure the safety and security of the event, and that the conditions of the tickets are maintained. Court-siding fitted into that in the same way as the eviction of a drunken spectator. The catch-all nature of that mandate is open to question.

Equally, the parallel is not appropriate. Public drunkenness was removed from the New Zealand statute book in 1981. People cannot be ejected from a ground for that alone. But the likes of disorderly behaviour and offensive behaviour or language are included in the Summary Offences Act. If being drunk in a public place is not a criminal offence, behaviour that would lead the police to eject a drunk from a sportsground certainly is. There is no such tightly prescribed fallback position with court-siding.

Ironically, the police have been adamantly opposed to the reinstatement of public drunkenness as a criminal offence. They say that this would take up too much of their time and resources. Yet the World Cup sees them doing just this in the interests of a privately run and extremely lucrative event.

More puzzlingly still, why has modern technological know-how not eliminated the practice? If there was no broadcasting delay, there would be no court-siding. And nor would there be the odd spectacle of the police going out of their way to tackle something that is not a criminal offence.

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