No Balls

The mood in Pakistan is bitter, angry and vengeful. Effigies of Salman Butt have been burned, his name has been painted on donkeys and the no-ball bowlers are being violently abused all over thecountry. Demands that the corrupt cricketers be hanged in public are gaining ground. Among younger members of the elite there is shock that Butt (educated at a posh school) has let the side down.Mohammad Amir they could understand since he’s from a poor family. The blindness of this cocooned layer of young Pakistanis is hardly a surprise, but popular anger should not be underestimated. Theno-ballers and their captain will need round-the-clock security when they return. Much better to take a long holiday abroad (surely they can afford it) and let tempers cool. There is enoughevidence already for them to be suspended, if not by the neck.

Meanwhile the pusillanimous Pakistan Cricket Board, whose chairman is the defence minister’s brother-in-law, should immediately rebrand itself the No-Balls Cricket Board. The coach, Waqar Younis,was once a brilliant bowler but was also involved in match-fixing, named and shamed ten years ago in the report of the Qayyum Commission, the last of three quasi-judicial enquiries in Pakistan. Javed Miandad, amongothers, testified that ‘during his captaincy he had been informed by Idress Cadbury, who is the brother of alleged bookie Hanif Cadbury, that Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and another player whose namehe could not remember was on his brother's books.’ The two stars were reprimanded and fined, but let off the hook. Hanif Cadbury was punished by the supreme command of the betting mafias, trackeddown and murdered in South Africa – enough to deter other whistleblowers ever since.

If matches were being fixed on Younis’s watch I find it difficult to believe that he would not be aware of what was going on. The assistant coach, Ijaz Ahmed, was also accused during the QayyumInquiry of betting and match-fixing, though it concluded, ‘in lieu of evidence to the contrary’, that he was not guilty. He was arrested for fraud last year in relation to a land scam in Lahore.His brother-in-law is the former Pakistan captain, Salim Malik, banned from cricket for life after his corruption was exposed in the late 1990s.

The rot goes deep and new players like Amir must find it difficult to resist the demands of the betting mafia when their requests are relayed by authority figures in the dressing-room. Equallydisturbing is the sight of other young players, barely in the squad, looking on admiringly as the bookie displays his ill-gotten gains.

That the president of the No-Balls Cricket Board is still in denial is bad enough. That the ICC and ECB are delaying the decision that needs to be taken is even more disturbing. Nobody who hasfollowed cricket in Pakistan over the last three or four decades can have been surprised by the revelations in the News of the World. Cricket in Pakistan has long been institutionallycorrupt. This was symbolised not so long ago when Javed Miandad’s son married the daughter of the Bombay crime king Dawood Ibrahim, the most wanted man in India.

What is to be done? For starters life bans should be imposed on all concerned apart from Amir, who should be punished for a limited term provided he speaks the truth. The Pakistan cricketingmanagement should be sent to staff the brothels of Lahore and Karachi. A new structure independent of the government on every level needs to be created and there are former cricketers (Imran Khan,Rameez Raja, Aamer Sohail, Rashid Latif) and incorruptible administrators available who should constitute a Cricket Trust of Pakistan, to control and clean the sport over the next five years andappoint their successors.

An annual fixture between a corrupt team chosen by the No-Balls Board and a non-corrupt eleven chosen by the Trust should commence forthwith. In a few years the Trust might win the matches.Meanwhile the website of The News (Pakistan’s largest daily) was earlier this week misspelling Taunton as Tainton. Couldthis be deliberate?