Paul Lewis: Sting leaves cricket in a fix

TP Sudhindra. Photo / Supplied

There is one burning question to come from the news that five Indian cricketers are in the gun for alleged illegal activities, including spot fixing, after another "sting" - why are the media taking the lead in this and not cricket itself?

In a week of supreme irony, when former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie were facing charges of perverting the course of justice in Britain's odious phone hacking scandal, the role of the News of the World should not be forgotten.

They and the celebrated "fake sheikh" led the sting which exposed Pakistani cricketers Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir for spot fixing, leading to jail sentences.

So not all the NOTW antics were ugly and possibly criminal, though many had a big old belly laugh when Brooks and her husband lashed out at what hubby called "a witch-hunt" (Really? Can't remember many of those in The Sun and the NOTW ...) and an inability to give his wife a fair trial because of the "biased commentary" about her.

Brooks herself said she was baffled by the charges and that history would reveal the action against her as "nothing more than an expensive sideshow, a waste of public money". The implication was that the police surely had better things to do than hunt down journalists, persuaded to do so by a prevailing atmosphere of public disapproval and political need for some heads to hold up to the baying crowd.

Sound familiar? It should - it's what newspapers like the NOTW and The Sun do in their campaigns; they raise the public temperature on an issue or a personality and burrow away, turning up facts and using them to bludgeon authorities into action.

There's nothing wrong with that; both papers have done some sensational exposes.

But people like the Brooks can hardly squeal when the blowtorch is applied to them; just as the celebrities that line the pages of many papers can hardly credibly protest at having their personal lives held up to public scrutiny when they have made their fame and fortune from the very same public who remain highly interested in them ...

The Brooks' squeals reminded me of an old story from the UK, from the days when prostitution was illegal but massage parlours fell into a grey area.

One reporter, his newspaper determined to guard the moral boundaries of the nation, set forth - armed with a tape recorder. His orders were to make sure the masseuses suggested impropriety and the price before the reporter, as the argot of the time had it, "made an excuse and left", without sampling what was being offered.

He did this by saying that he did not have enough money for the services proposed.

Quite where he secreted the tape recorder is unknown and possibly uncomfortable but our man did well, gaining enough knowledge to expose some dens of iniquity.

Until, that is, he met that well-known cliche: the working girl with the heart of gold. Brushing aside his protests that he did not have the required fee, the masseuse told him he could owe it to her and pay her next time and then began her tender ministrations in a way that forestalled further dissent.

When he left, the reporter thought he'd got away with it - until said woman rang his news editor, complaining that he still owed her five quid.

The reporter reminds me of the International Cricket Council and now the BCCI - the governing body of Indian cricket. Just as he did, both bodies have effectively allowed the baby-oiled hand of corruption to stroke them, while remaining prostrate and protesting weakly.

Both councils have anti-corruption units who tend to look rather silly when the NOTW and now a Hindi-language TV channel have exposed corruption in cricket. Such stings have been around for decades and, with all those millions of dollars sloshing round in professional sport these days, it is no surprise to see them entering this new territory.

The BCCI suspended five players for illegal activities following a sting operation by India TV that showed them either agreeing to spot-fixing in domestic games or to negotiate Indian Premier League contracts, not allowed by tournament rules - TP Sudhindra, Shalabh Srivastava, Mohnish Mishra, Amit Yadav and Abhinav Bali.

The sting involved reporters posing as agents of a sports management firm offering players money to perform in a certain way at specific times in a match. It showed Sudhindra, who plays for Deccan Chargers in the Twenty20 Indian Premier League, allegedly bowling a no-ball in a local T20 game in the central Indian city of Indore for US$1000. Pictures captured by a hidden camera appeared to show Sudhindra agreeing to bowl a no-ball with his second delivery of the game. They then showed Sudhindra bowling a no-ball by well over a foot at the agreed time. The allegations are denied by the five.

None of the players is well-known, although they are all assigned as domestic players to IPL teams. The news casts grave doubts not only on Indian cricket - just as the NOTW sting exposed Pakistani cricket - but also the credibility of the rich Indian Premier League.

BCCI President N Srinivasan said: "IPL, we believe, is clean. We have got the anti-corruption unit covering it. They are in charge of the security."

Uh-huh. Why does a certain beer billboard come to mind?

This latest sting shows that not even jail sentences are enough to stop the corruption and it brings into question cricket's ability - or desire - to stamp out this stuff.

No sport is strong enough to withstand the firmly-held belief by fans that they are being ripped off.

But if cricket won't protect cricket (why can't the anti-corruption Johnnies work similar stings?) then I guess the media must. Someone has to.