James Griffin: Crooks, lines and stinkers

James Griffin. Photo / Dean Purcell

What I learned from the news this week is that it is possible to bet vast sums of money on whether a Pakistani man, running in to bowl a cricket ball at an Englishman, will put his foot over the line that differentiates a legitimate ball from a non-legitimate ball according to the rules of cricket. Excuse me?

For the many, many people who do not understand the rules of cricket, what basically happens is this: the bowler runs in and bowls the ball at the batsman at the other end. At the bowler's end of the pitch there is a white line, which is there to tell the bowler "bowl from here, mate". And if the bowler steps over that line while he's hiffing the ball at the batsman, the umpire flaps his arm, which means "hang on mate, that was crap" and tells him to bowl it again. Thus it is called a "no-ball".

And apparently there are people out there who bet truckloads of dosh on when and if this sort of no-ball thing happens in a test match. Apparently it is called "spot fixing" or "fancy fixing" but I call it simply "what the *% is that all about?" This is test match cricket. This is a sporting event that goes on for five days - a full working week. This is sport at its most funereal pace, in which - if the test match goes the whole distance - at least 2700 legitimate deliveries, plus God (and a few bookies apparently) knows what number of illegitimate deliveries, must be bowled. Seriously, you're telling me there are people out there who are willing to wager a king's ransom on each and every one of those balls? What is wrong with these people? Surely they need to get lives.

Forget the rights and wrongs of whether it is right or wrong for some young Pakistani fast-bowler to accept a hefty backhander in return for stepping over the line (literally and figuratively). I'm more concerned about the fact that there are apparently people out there - in the back streets of Pakistan, we are told - who are willing to bet a fortune on such bollocks. What kind of sick, demented, gambling culture is going on here?

And if these people are betting on something as trivial as if some bloke puts his boot down on one side of a line or another, what else are they betting on? In fact, is there anything in any sport that we can now put down to simple human error and not see it as the result of some uber-sporting-match-fixing scam?

Irene van Dyk is an awesome shooter of the ball on the netball court but there are times when even she, the mightiest of them all, misses a sitter. On one hand this is an inevitability in the fine sport of netball - where statistics tell us that even the best goalshoot in the world has to miss at some stage. Or does she? Has Irene, in fact, been working to a complex set of betting equations that say she must miss every 23rd shot, but only in the 3rd quarter, when the Silver Ferns are three or more goals ahead, so as not to seem suspicious?

And Dan Carter. He never misses with the boot. Except sometimes he does. Or does he? Or did the miss start in a Karachi betting shop, months earlier? And is it a coincidence that Dan is sidelined for surgery on his non-kicking leg at precisely the time when this whole scandal is breaking? Who knows? Certainly not I.

And what of the Warriors? They regularly lose the games they should win and win the games many pick them to lose - how suspicious is that? Actually, come to think of it, I think even the dodgiest Pakistani bookmaker would draw the line at trying to predict (or pre-predict) what the Warriors are going to do week in and week out, so maybe we'll leave them out of this in-depth investigation.

Okay, of course I don't think that Irene or Dan or even the Warriors are in the thrall of some dodgy bloke from the sub-continent, tarnishing their sporting genius with the promise of cash or jewels or part-ownership of South Canterbury Finance or a ride-on mower or even a home theatre system. No, I'm just here to lament the fact that the grand old dinosaur of world sport - test cricket - is apparently nothing more than a week-long game of roulette in which the wheel is rigged.

Yes, a line got crossed here. And it wasn't just a white line painted on a pitch, it was the line that heads down the path to where there is no honour in sport. And when there is no honour in sport, it all turns to crap. Just ask Tiger Woods how that place feels.