Hello World,
I hope you have realized by now that the governing bodies of international cricket and Indian cricket, have officially fooled you into yet another Fixing Fairytale like they have been doing all these years.
Sreesanth, Chavan and Chandila were arrested for being involved in spot-fixing while playing for Rajasthan Royals in the IPL tournament that concluded recently. The media pummeled these cricketers and others involved and the authorities of cricket expressed their shock and disbelief to this news. A whole bunch of bookies and businessmen have been arrested as the investigation went nationwide covering almost all major cities in India.
The latest news has it that Sreesanth and Chavan have been released on bail from Tihar jail. Here’s the bonus…..17 others arrested in relation to this spot-fixing/betting racket case have also been released from judicial custody on bail!!!!
Here are a few newslinks that you can amuse yourself with if you feel the need for an initial peek at the latest news on the IPL spot fixing scandal before reading further:
This is not the first time this is happening. Every time cricketers involve in (and get caught for) malpractice, they get away with it. The punishment slammed on them by the boards and team managements in rare cases restrict them from playing official formats of cricket for a certain period of time and that’s it.
I am surprised at the fact that an obvious outcome of such cases have time and again been subdued and the most outrageously incredible outcomes are forced to happen, eventually fooling the average cricket lover who would love to watch cricket that is not scripted out in advance or influenced half-way through.
When someone is arrested for spot/match fixing and/or betting, the simplest thing to happen is to file the charge sheet on the spot-fixing and betting involvement aspects and interrogate the suspects in the court, to identify the actual Fixing Racket that is ruling all forms of televised cricket. I am not the legal expert here but removing the legal jargon out of the issue, the complaint should be as simple as ”.....X, Y and Z took money from A, B and C for performing in specific terms during Match-XX with the terms being: a) No-Ball : 2nd ball of 2nd over b) Minimum 13 runs in 4th over…” and the trial can easily go on, attempting to establish the facts of the case and based on the findings, the court can determine whether the suspects are guilty or not. Any additional information collected during the investigation can be used to file a separate case as it may involve a charge which may not necessarily be related to fixing, such as involvement with underworld and so on.
Instead, the suspects and their accomplices are arrested, interrogated, taken into custody and produced in the court with a case that beats a Harry Potter novel by leaps and bounds. Let’s get this straight. Interpol and governments of many countries have been trying for decades to arrest Dawood Ibrahim and his mafia associates but could not get into 100 feet of them……and some city police team which can’t capture child-molesters and rapists attempts to link corrupt cricketers with Dawood & Company and press charges linked with organized crime!!!!! Why go all the way to Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA) when there is accepting bribe and under-performing, eventually violating Indian law and the codes of IPL/BCCI/ICC who are also bound by the law of the land? The police are never dumb by default. They are dumb by design, a design that is yet to be revealed.
This would not have happened if the angry bookie from some corner of a city had got the promised/demanded amount of money from his superiors in the betting ring. Someone gave up information regarding his colleagues’ involvement and that led to arrests of a whole bunch of idiots related to a stupid betting ring. They were kept in custody for a few weeks and now they are out there, walking tall among the innocent believers of televised cricket.
The question really to be answered is:
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being Slightly Dumb and 10 being Dumb as a Bag of Bricks, how would the Indian news media and governing bodies of cricket describe the Cricket Watching Public in terms of their ability to comprehend televised cricket and related news?
The answer would be anywhere between 125 and infinity.
That’s the reason why every year unhappy customers turn in bookies and players who in turn snitch about their colleagues and the usually still waters of the Cricket Gutter gets stirred to mushiness and left to settle down taking its own time, not to neglect, with the ardent cricket fan truly, madly and deeply trusting the televised cricket dramas in spite of the in-frequent media farts.
Is it so impossible to take these fixing-suspects (they are not fixers/convicts until found guilty by the court of law) in front of the judge and ask them to narrate what happened and name everyone they know were involved in the narrated incidents???
This clearly did not happen. Instead, the suspects were charged with something related to kidnapping a unicorn and the court snapped a regulation “Get Out!!!” dismissing the whole case and acquitting all the suspects from the case. Having the suspects shift from Police Custody to Judicial Custody is only to enable the suspects to apply for judicial bail where the police teams would not have any say on the decision. Anything that suspects say in the court during the trial gets documented and all those whose names are mentioned must have to appear and answer questions during the trial, which may lead to official documentation of dirty secrets of cricket boards and players, staining the reputation of the televised versions of cricket forever. This is exactly why the courtroom discussions on cricket fixing scandals often don’t make it out loud with any concrete info. I am not saying this is what happened. I am just asking, if this did not happen, what else happened???
Why are the BCCI and ICC keeping mum on all the fixing scandals that leak out every 10 months? At least a formal investigation leading to a logical closure of each incident might have helped save the game’s reputation. Instead the captain of the Indian cricket team is asked to keep mum during press-meet. All of a sudden cricket personalities become diplomatic politicians and we are expected to believe in them and their cricket dramas that are telecast on channels across the world. Cricket fans are now turning into the Secret Admirers, not knowing for sure, if they have to celebrate their favorite player’s century…given that there is a high chance the bowlers of the opposing team have been paid for bowling loose to the batsmen. People want to scream out loud when their team wins but now it is quite awkward since there is a risk of the winning team captain being named an ally by a greedy bookie in a shady YouTube video.
I sincerely believe that the whole cricket administration set-up that both the international and Indian bodies have, has a lot of loop-holes that render the boards, teams and all their matches an inch away from transparent sporting events and that is the reason cricket is yet to be recognized by sports authorities around the world.
Let me take up an example and see if my thoughts make any real sense or not.
Here’s an excerpt from the Anti-Corruption Policy of IPL, as mentioned in the official IPL website www.iplt20.com:
“….it may be an offence under this clause to disclose Inside Information: (a) to journalists or other members of the media; and/or (b) on social networking websites where the Participant might reasonably be expected to know that disclosure of such information in such circumstances could be used in relation to Betting. However, nothing in this Article is intended to prohibit any such disclosure made within a personal relationship (such as to a member of the Participant's family) where it is reasonable for the Participant to expect that such information can be disclosed in confidence and without being subsequently used for Betting”.
How the hell does disclosing to family members remain allowed when disclosing to media persons and on social media is an offense?
Why is it not an offence when the disclosure of inside information might be used for fixing parts or all of any cricket match? How can a bowler agree to bowl a No-Ball in the second over without knowing the bowling spell-sequence as planned by the captain? What if the bowler agrees and the captain makes a last minute plan of using another bowler for the stipulated over? How does the bowler know for sure he would bowl more than two overs, given that an IPL innings has only 20 overs with a maximum of 4 per bowler?
The only way out for the bookies is to have the captains in the loop. Captains have to plan as per the strategy and reveal the plan ahead of time so that the spots for betting are decided in parallel with the fixes. The fixes are bound to last minute changes depending on the betting odds that turn out. The cure is simple. Just ask the captain not to speak anything about fixing during the press meet and provide him with immunity from any fixing scandal rash.
First of all, please visit the link given below to read, this baloney of a rule:
This is ridiculous beyond belief. Why would someone frame a rule where revealing information on social media and to media persons is an offence and revealing to family members is “un-prohibited”???? Anything disclosed in confidence is vulnerable to be used for anything. It all depends on the user. If he/she wants to use the information for betting and fixing, he/she would use it. The only way to prevent this is to restrict the revelation of such information to anyone outside the official circle. The cricket administrators are not hangmen or surgical assistants who have to vent out their frustrations of watching a fellow human being suffer through painful situations.
The IPL Anti-Corruption Rule I have presented above, in my view says that if anyone suspects someone might use the inside information for betting, then revealing it to them would be an offence and at the same time, the same person can reveal it to their family members if they trust their family members and know for sure they would not use it for betting. So the bookies need not talk to cricket players and team administrators. Instead they can talk to the immediate family members of cricketers and cricket administrators. The cricketers and administrators can tell their family and they in turn can liaise with the bookies to enable smooth and streamlined betting and match/spot-fixing. I personally am attracted to the idea of drafting Standard Operating Procedures for Cricket Match/Spot Fixing and Cricket Betting. This crippled rule mentioned above can be interpreted in a million other ways and still each one of them would hold those who disclose information to family members as non-offenders as per the rule.
Well, former BCCI President Srinivasan and Chennai Super Kings Team Principal Gurunath Meiyyappan have held this rule of IPL very close to their hearts and implemented every crooked interpretation of this rule along with all the now-lying-low criminal team owners, bookies and players who together constituted the Brotherhood of sold-Out Cricket Personalities….and the whole cricket audience is still in complete belief of IPL, BCCI and the cricket matches that are shown on TV.
How can a sports body with a self-deprecating rule be relied on for a genuine sporting event? If money can buy everything, why isn’t cricket buying a slot in world-renowned athletic events? It is because of the convoluted corruption scar that has entered all parts of the official versions of the game.
With the spot-fixing suspects out on bail along with the bookies, the cricket administrators are yet to walk out scot-free. Once they do it in a few weeks from now, things would be back to normal, bookies cheating public with false hope, influencing players to bowl no-balls and bat slow, and cricket administrators regulating the media using the broadcast rights as the carrot. The media, time and again has failed to address the issue with responsibility. The attention has gradually shifted to team owners, managers and businessmen who have betted on IPL games. These are things that should come after the List of Cricketers/Modus Operandi of cricketers who execute the fixed elements of the game in the priority list of “Facts to be Found in a Cricket Scandal”, something no media is even attempting to get into or mention, only indicating the likelihood of News-Fixing by the Cricket Boards. If they are really interested in taking money to go loose on the fixing scandal, why release the news in the first place? If this is not the case, then they really need to learn their trade.
Again, we arrive at the blind spot of match/spot fixing, without clear information on who the real culprit is and how many more are involved and for how long, only to realize that cricket boards and team managements stand tall and strong at the vantage point from where the innocent cricket fan would be watched with a smirk, reassuring again that the fire is out and the day is safe. Thanks to “The Avengers of Corrupt Cricket.” If you are now inclined to delve a little deeper into the history of match/spot-fixing in cricket, say for the past one decade or so, feel free to visit my past post by clicking here. I have made an attempt to examine the circumstantial elements of the Hansie Cronje and Bob Woolmer fixing episodes.
We can as well release a video-game patch for EA Sports, where the cricket games can have an additional functionality of Fixing/Betting. We never complained about cheat codes of any video games. The car in Age of Empires is as good as a batsman who agrees to bat slow and reduce the possibility of winning. It only makes sense you know. All said and done, the cricket fan has yet again been fooled by Corrupt Cricket Boards, whether or not we realize it.
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On a very different note [a shameless plug], if you are interested in unique tamil short films, feel free to visit https://www.summamovies.com/. I couldn't tolerate the mass masala entertainers anymore and decided I will do my best to produce content with substance. I have a long a way to go as a producer and a start-up founder, but I am glad our journey has begun. I look forward to your support. Each film on our site costs INR 15. Thanks!!!
Regards,
