Will whoever is in charge of cricket please stand up

My love affair with cricket ended when serious allegations of match-fixing first tainted the sport in India, involving the likes of Kapil Dev and Mohammed Azharuddin.

The scandals forever turned me off the game.
In the land where cricket is religion, I went from being a believer to an agnostic.

Now I’m an atheist.

So I can only imagine what the legions of Pakistani cricket fans must be feeling.

Sick and cheated, at the very least.

However, when it comes to making charges stick, it’s not about what you know, it’s about what you can prove in court.

So, firstly, much depends on making the News of the World allegations stick – not for the sake of it, but because they are so serious that they must be proven.

Secondly, the cricketing world must rally to protect grassroots Pakistani cricket. The fertile fields that gave us Imran Khan and Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram and Abdul Qadir, must not be allowed to run barren from the fallout of corruption and greed.

Lastly, someone needs to stand up and take charge. Somebody needs to hold the game by the scruff of the neck and take responsibility for the malaise of match-fixing. Some one … wait, what’s that, an international body exists? To protect the game?

The International Cricket Council (ICC), you say. They are in charge of cricket in the world, you say.

Well, I say you would not know it from the way they react every time the sovereignty, dignity and very essence of the game is attacked.
The ICC, I suspect, has three responses forever on ready-to-send:
No comment.

No comment at this time.

Still no comment.

Millions of cricket fans would like, for a change, for the ICC to show they are in charge, to show some zeal, some sense of outrage.
Consider this extract from the ICC statement after the Pakistan scandal broke on Sunday:

"As this is now subject to a police investigation neither the ICC, ECB [English Cricket Board], PCB [Pakistan Cricket Board] nor the ground authority, MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club), will make any further comment."

Really? As the world governing body is that the best you could come up with to say about allegations that make a mockery out of every cricket match that Pakistan has played over the last two years.

The ICC have their own Anti-Corruption and Security Unit.

I quote Australian cricket legend Ian Chappel, writing in the Australian on Monday: "If a newspaper can do this, then what have the ICC and its anti-corruption body been doing?"

Every time a cricket wound has oozed puss – including the recent IPL controversy – the ICC has trotted out the ‘no comment’ (or to be fair, occasionally the it’s-a–local-board-issue) statement.

Well, cricket is being mauled and while we appreciate a world body not acting as a meddlesome, finger-wagging, pain-in-the-behind, the world needs to know that the people in charge, are in fact, in charge.

No comment, when the dirt has hit the fan, is as good (or bad) as a no-ball.

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