Zulqarnain Haider will be racked with self-doubt and beset with confusion as he tries to settle his nerves less than a week after fleeing Dubai to escape the influence and clutches of match-fixing and gambling “influencers”.
As the 24-year-old Pakistani wicketkeeper tries to settle down with friends in the United Kingdom, he will wonder more and more whether what he saw and heard really was what he thought it was. And the cricket world, by and large, will do nothing to dissuade him from those doubts.
That is the modus operandi of the illegal gambling underworld, just as it is with those who trade and deal in narcotics and weapons.
A surfeit of middle men make it impossible to pinpoint the actual peddler of information or, indeed, the user. At the time the player has absolutely no doubt that he is being targeted and is being physically threatened and legally compromised.
But when the incidents are recalled in the cold light of day there are so many doubts, gaps and vagaries that not only does the story collapse in a legal context, but the player is easily made to look foolish and usually begins to doubt himself. All it takes is a single comment like: “Are you sure it was a serious offer?”
More than a decade ago Rashid Latif and Basit Ali travelled to South Africa rather than return home to Pakistan after a tour of Zimbabwe, with Latif even phoning ahead to speak to a South African journalist about his determination to “tell everything” about the fixing of certain aspects of every match and even, in some cases, the results. But when it came to revealing details and constructing a concrete case against their corrupt colleagues, they developed cold feet and the story was stillborn.
Both men still make occasional statements about the dangers of match-fixing and illegal gambling but their impact on the problem was nothing as effective as they would have hoped because their information, although almost certainly true, was based only on their testimony, some hearsay and a little conjecture. It was all too easy for the game’s administrators at both national and international level to give the men a token five minutes “ear service” before walking away towards the next game or series. In short, they were isolated from the game.
The same could be said, already, of Haider. The Pakistan Cricket Board has cancelled his national contract and there has been talk of charging him with a breach of ICC security protocols because he failed to report the approach to fix a match and subsequent threats to team management. The question that should be asked, of course, is why he didn’t trust the management enough to tell them?
Haider must be debriefed as comprehensively as a military spy, in a bid to extract information that he may not even realise he has. Once that has been done he must be reintegrated back into the game and used as an example to the next generation of youngsters that threats and bullying do not always succeed and that playing the game clean and “straight” is possible.
Almost deafening silence
It has always been difficult to understand the social dynamics of a Pakistan cricket team — the players have admitted as much themselves for decades. But the startling, almost deafening silence from the rest of the squad since Haider’s dramatic departure has been extraordinary. Not a single word of support? No sympathy, no empathy, no good wishes — nothing. Why?
Meanwhile, the South African players have followed proceedings with undiminished bewilderment. Their own education about the dangers of corruption has left them far, far less susceptible to bribery than most others in the world, but it is their remuneration that ultimately protects them from temptation.
Some Proteas will earn as much as 10 times more than their counterparts in this series. And, having been selected for the national team, they are about 10 times as unlikely to be jettisoned and forgotten at the whim of a prejudiced selector or administrator as their counterparts.
All of which means, of course, that the first Test match between the teams, that started on Friday in Dubai, will be a one-sided walkover, with a dispirited Pakistan team rolled over inside three days, allowing the buoyant Proteas time to play golf at the magnificent Els Course. Or even the Montgomery Course. Or the Emirates Course, where the European Tour’s Race to Dubai will conclude.
Maybe.
The irony of the history of players who have either been proved or strongly suspected to have indulged the gamblers and bookmakers is that, when there are no “instructions” on the table, they can produce performances of the very highest, match-winning calibre. Call it guilt appeasement or call it anger, but a compromised cricketer can be a very dangerous opponent.
In truth, though, those moments of brilliance are flashes of light in a dark room. If they produce enough of them they could even win a Test match, as they did against England earlier this year, but it is a haphazard process and not one to be relied upon.
Expect Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel to dominate the bowling while Graeme Smith, Hashim Amla, Jacques Kallis, Ashwell Prince and AB de Villiers — the best top order in the world by a distance — chalk up the runs.