For organised crime in Asian betting scams, read artistocratic mega-punters in English sport 250 years ago. Gambling scandals are nothing new – especially in cricket, write Kevin Mitchell and Luke Tansey
Any suspicion that there is a mole in the England cricket team leaking confidential information of varying quality and relevance to an illegal bookmaker in a backstreet in Bombay might have sounded preposterous to outraged observers last week – but a similar notion 250 years ago would have raised barely a Georgian eyebrow.
While there is no allegation that such a pimpernel lurks in Alec Stewart’s squad to match those wicked Australian informers, Mark Waugh and Shane Warne, revelations down under and in the United Kingdom in the past week will nevertheless confirm for cricket historians that there is nothing new under the old sunhat.
English cricketer Adam Hollioake joined in the fun by claiming that he had been approached by bookies – and sent them packing – at the one-day tournament in Sharjah a year ago. But flannelled wide boys have been at it, on and off, since the game started.
This is not such a shocking claim when you understand that cricket was established as a public spectacle in the 18th century specifically as a betting medium.
A contemporary moralist wrote in 1722, “Gaming is become so much the fashion among the Beau-Monde that he who in company should appear ignorant of the Games in Vogue would be reckoned low- bred and hardly fit for conversation.” The link between betting and sport was always a stubbornly ingrained one among the aristocracy and their employees, the butchers and bakers who bowled their overs for them, and fought their brutal, banned prizefights to the point of death.
A good result ensured continued employment. Gambling has been an enduring glue in this nation’s otherwise fractured class structure ever since.
What is surprising about the dudgeon raised so loudly now is the ignorance which surrounds it. The notion that cricket, particularly, epitomised everything noble about sport is seriously detached from reality. Among the first gambling laws was the 1727 Articles of Agreement, which legislated on being “caught-out” and “run-out” in cricket, simple guidelines designed to eliminate gambling disputes.
Charles II, a keen punter, had decreed 50 years earlier that gambling debts of more than 100 need not be paid, such was the aggravation engendered in rows in the seedier London salons and murky backstreet cockpits.
Boxing’s first set of rules in 1743 was also introduced to ease betting arguments. By the end of the 18th century, bookmakers were staking out cricketers’ pubs to glean information before an important match, and gamblers, known as “legs”, also spent their money and time impressing players, some of whom were in London for the first time, with entertainment at the capital’s leading public houses, where they would be surrounded by “popular comedians, Bohemian journalists, money lenders and bookmakers”.
The “legs” regularly “converted” jockeys, fighters and walkers. It was big business. At the end of the 18th century backers were prepared to stand 5E000 guineas – a huge sum at the time – that pedestrians, as they were known, could walk 144km in less than 23 hours. These sportsmen were considered professionals, working-class athletes earning a living in harsh and unruly times, when morality varied according to birthright.
“The professionals were, in effect, hired help,” says Dominic Malcolm, of Leicester University’s Centre for Research Into Sport and Society. “They needed to be respected, or seen to be honest, which is why top professionals were linked solely to one aristocrat – it was too much of a risk to employ him part-time when he could get money elsewhere.”
Then came the backlash, as Christianity competed with the gin-house mentality. Bookmakers were barred from Lord’s in the 1820s and changes to the Laws of Cricket, such as the introduction of boundaries in 1866, were concessions to a sporting public increasingly aware of scams.
At this time in Australia, there were riots reminiscent of the chaos that reigned at cricket matches the previous century in Britain. The odds on matches were printed in newspapers, and bookies had offices in the stands.
Then, after two riots, one in 1873 witnessed by WG Grace, and another in 1878, bookies were forced out of grounds. The 1878 fracas culminated in an assault on England’s captain, Lord Harris, at a point in the match when the local side were losing. The agent provocateur was a notorious bookmaker of the time who was in a hole for 1E000 if England triumphed.
And so on to 1998. Not such a long journey, really. The laws are in place, the third umpire sees nearly everything and still allegations of match-rigging fill the air, not to mention hypocrisy.
The betting culture is as strong as it ever was, and it is ludicrous to suggest, as some apologists have, that what we are witnessing in Australia and Pakistan, where the problem resurfaced first, is an aberration. Certainly, the probability is that what Waugh and Warne were doing in Sri Lanka in 1994 – selling weather forecasts (hah!) to a dodgy bookmaker – was no isolated lapse of judgment.
What are we to make of this from Warne’s biography? “The whole betting scene in India and Pakistan is illegal, so the people running the betting are basically gangsters. Not the sort of people to trust or to play around with.” How very true. Pity that three years before he had put his name to such noble thoughts, Warne had been taking money from those self-same gangsters.
The scale of betting in the sub- continent is hard to take in. The Asian Wall Street Journal revealed in a serious study of sports betting across the continent that Hong Kong gamblers had bet 600-million on the World Cup last June – on one single Internet betting site in Macau.
Compare that to the total World Cup outlay in Britain – an estimated 100- million – and you have an idea of the extent to which gambling is a part of life in Asia. Betting on cricket is huge in South Asia, whereas football is more popular elsewhere.
The sinister subtext to the betting is the presence of organised crime. This money is not coming just from the sampans; much of it is almost certainly laundered drugs cash, which explains the fantastic sums involved.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan cricketer Salim Malik threatens to sue Warne and Waugh, chutzpah of the highest order. Malik, the Australians insist, asked them to throw a game in 1995. He says, strangely, that the fact they were fined for admitting they had taken money from a bookmaker proves his innocence.
Whatever Malik’s protestations, there is widespread agreement that many of the results of one-day internationals on the sub-continent over the past decade were manufactured.
Similar allegations have been made about matches in Zimbabwe and England involving Pakistan. This is not a situation reached by having just the occasional informer on the payroll.
Doug Brown, the Warwickshire all- rounder, admitted on Thursday that he had been approached in a Lahore hotel – just as those Georgian cutpurses used to do – last winter by a stranger wanting information on England’s squad going on to the Sharjah tournament. The man was ejected from the team hotel and Brown was left shocked by the incident.
The former Australian all-rounder Greg Matthews, who liked a bet, also says he was approached – although he was not so taken aback – and to imagine that players had never thought of gambling on the game they know best is spectacularly naive. Go to Headingley 1981 for evidence.
That Test match – the one that Bob Willis’s bowling and Ian Botham’s batting won against odds of 500-1, with Rodney Marsh and Dennis Lillee embarrassed winners with the bookmakers – reveals much about the media’s relationship with each other and with the players.
When the 11 journalists travelling with the Australian team learned that the team bus driver had laid the bet, they were faced with a dilemma: publish or be damned as weak-kneed. Almost to a man they were gambling types themselves and they voted seven for four not to write the story – only for one of them, Frank Crook of the now defunct Sydney Sun, to demur. He was going to write it anyway, he said – and the story almost swamped the famous heroics of Bob Willis and Ian Botham in a war of headlines.
What a contrast with the portrayal of the Australian sporting media last week. They had hounded the Australian Cricket Board for four years about the persistent rumours surrounding Warne and Waugh until they finally cracked the story.
Well done to them. And yet, you will still hear the old guard banging on about how, in their day, they enjoyed a much more comfortable relationship with the players, that they did not pry into matters off the field, concerning themselves only with the splendid spectacle in front of them.
But those who should bear more of the blame than the players or the bookies are the administrators, the heirs to the concerned politicians nearly three centuries ago who tried to save weak men from themselves by establishing rules that even the biggest dimwit could understand.
The former Pakistan captain Imran Khan said on Friday: “Match- fixing is a serious offence which means you get money for your team’s loss. The International Cricket Council should lay down clear and strict guidelines so that no player dares to get involved in things like match- fixing and betting.”
A bit late. The Australian Cricket Board, who tried to cover up the whole sorry episode, responded with similar cant; they will launch another inquiry. What poor historians they all are. Otherwise they would know, as Damon Runyon did, that all life is 6-5 against, and that’s as good a bet as any of us will ever be offered.
By its nature, gambling demands secrecy and few sports are more secretive than cricket; and few professions are more conspiratorial than journalism.
ENDS