the game
Australian cricket is in turmoil. (Yes, Australian cricket.) But were Waugh and Warne merely following a global trend? Matthew Engel on how batting and bowling became betting
One day during the recent Adelaide Test between England and Australia, my taxi- driver was a migrant from Malaysia. His English was indifferent, and conversation difficult. When he heard I was from Britain, he asked if I followed football, and what I thought of Chelsea’s last win.
“Do you support Chelsea?” I asked. “No,” he said. “I had a bet. I had 10 poun’ on them.” At least that’s what I thought he said. This did not seem very interesting and we relapsed into silence. It was a while before something clicked: there are no pounds in Australia; it switched to dollars decades ago. “Wait a minute,” I said. “How much did you say you had on Chelsea?” He was much more distinct this time. “Ten thou,” he replied.
This, apparently, was the customary level of his punting, and of all his Malaysian mates. I decided he didn’t need a tip.
As the public tries to make sense of cricket’s bribes scandal, it has been hard to grasp the crazed extent of Asia’s betting boom. The footballing side of things, concentrated in the Far East, emerged blinking into rather dappled sunlight during the Grobbelaar-Fashanu trial. Asian cricket betting, concentrated further west, has remained mysterious.
There are no branches of William Hill on the subcontinent. Betting (except at a few Raj-relic Indian racecourses and some Sri Lankan betting shops) is illegal, conducted by phone and on trust with clients introduced by friends; retribution for breach of that trust is understood to be old-fashioned and rapid.
The amounts involved are staggering: maybe A$15-million is staked on every Indian one-day international, and there are up to 50 of those a year. The risks, both for punters and bookmakers, are staggering too: five Indian bookies are said to have committed suicide over the past two years.
It is a world of grubby back rooms, whirring fans, bent coppers, bent sportsmen and occasional grotesque violence. Mixed with the familiar smells of India, there seems to be a powerful whiff of 1920s Chicago.
The evidence is that control of the gambling network is exercised not from India itself but from the Gulf states, where Indian and Pakistani workers flocked to find jobs in the wake of the oil boom of the early 1970s.
There, in the small but rich sheikhdom of Sharjah, is the cricket stadium which in the past 20 years has staged more international cricket than the major English grounds put together. The exiles work hard and send good money to support their families, but there are few diversions. Women are almost non- existent. Alcohol is mostly illegal, and the hobby of choice only for westerners. In such a society, gambling is inevitable.
And since satellite TV now beams the game almost continually across the region, cricket is the obvious medium. Betting on a one-day international, one bookie’s clerk told The Australian newspaper in a rare glimpse behind the veil, “is like eight hours of non-stop sex”. Well, each to his own; but it might be some kind of substitute.
The corruption of cricket itself has been an obvious result. The whole history of sport shows that gambling on this scale invariably leads to fixes. Cricket itself was primarily a betting game until 1817, when the Marleybone Cricket Club got fed up with the criminality and expelled the bookmakers from the temple.
Most cricketers (Shane Warne might actually be one of the few exceptions) are not paid anything like enough to fend off the attentions of gangsters running operations on this scale, any more than they fended off Kerry Packer and the apartheid-funded South Africans in the past.
Most of this has been known or suspected for four years. But it has taken the revelations about Warne and Mark Waugh to wake everyone up.
The news has had a profound impact across Australia. This is a country with a touching faith in “champions” – a word used to describe great players in team sports as well as star individuals. The concept of the dinky-di Aussie, hard but fair, is taken very seriously. The Aussies are less cynical than us about sport, and they consider Warne and Waugh’s behaviour an affront to tradition. They have been less inclined to consider the implications for worldwide cricket.
The offer of money for the provision of innocuous information was clearly an attempt to lure the players in much deeper. It seems like a sting that went wrong, perhaps because the gangsters tried to put the heat on them too impatiently. When Warne and Waugh were allegedly approached to fix a match, they squealed. It is not their fault that the Australian Cricket Board (ACB)did the bare minimum in response.
It is no coincidence that both men are known to like a bet. So, in spades, does Ricky “Punter” Ponting, who was approached for information at an Australian dog track. This suggests links that go beyond Asia. Ponting says he will say more to the ACB’s newly appointed investigator.
One suspects the whole truth is quite terrible. Much of it may drip out over the months ahead. But the administrators have known many of the facts for four years. They ignored them. That may be the most terrible thing of all.
ENDS