Cricket - Spot-fixing Seems to Get The Better of World Cup Cricket - ICC Investigates
Posted: Tuesday, March 01, 2011
by Drunken Mystic
http://drunkenmystic.wordpress.com
Speculation has been haunting the world of cricket for long and the ghost for speculation is match-fixing or spot-fixing. A group of people bet on the results of the match or a particular bowler or batsman as in how many wickets is he going to take within a particular number overs, or even how many runs would a batsman score in the powerplay period or how much is the team total going to be by the end of, say 21 overs. There are also bets on how many runs would be scored in a particular over during any course of the match.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) made sure that the 2011 World Cup will be under the scanner and also take stringent steps to make the tournament corruption-free. Have they been successful in offering us games free from corruption so far? Everybody is, doubting the credibility from the way the players have conducted themselves on the field up to now.
Game 1: Indiav/s Bangladesh: Virendar Sehwag played a fabulous 175 not out and this was one game of his life where he played his most unnatural game. His attacking flamboyance was missing, played relatively slow-paced game, no airy shots (which is his trademark), no risks taken at all which we usually see in all his games, every single shot played was to the ground. Indian bowling attack was poor than usual, Sreesanth gave 24 runs in one single over which seemed unusual because the line and length which he bowled was to make the batsman score. Bowlers do know where to pitch the ball to restrict runs, otherwise they won't be playing international cricket. If they are bad enough to maintain consistency of good line and length, then there are no good bowlers at all as only batsmen from all the teams seem to be scoring runs.
Game 2: Australiav/s Zimbabwe: This game, according to sources from
Game 3: Englandv/s Netherlands: I noticed a lot of full-length deliveries and also full tosses from James Anderson which were nothing but easy to hit. Doeschate had an easy cake to cut and have it too. He once steered the ball to mid-on and Kevin Petersen was fielding at the boundary line. What could have been cut-off, as only one run was made two. How? Kevin picks the ball and tosses it up in the air and catches it again, instead of throwing it back to the stumps immediately. This allowed the batsman to pick two runs. A lot of loose fielding from the English saw Netherlands score 292 – unusual for a team with no experience in Cricket or hardly any experience. Englandis just back with a victory over the Aussies in the Ashes.
The England batting was slow, and much behind the required run rate. They catch up speed in the 47th over and win the game with an over to spare. The bowling from Netherlands wasn’t spectacular and on 28th February, they had a thrashing defeat while playing the West Indies.
Game 4: India v/s England: This is one of the most speculative game of 2011 World Cup so far. Right from the word go, Sehwag started throwing his bat and playing across the line and edging the ball to the wicket-keeper and also tried giving a straight over the head catch to Jimmy Anderson the bowler. They were just smiling at each other wondering if things were going the way they were planned. Through the first few overs Sehwag just kept on playing air loose shots without any power so the ball could go straight up as a catch to the fielders in the inner circle. Finally, he edged and the wicket-keeper caught him.
Later, as wickets tumbled after Sachin Tendulkar’s so called 47th ODI ton, the Indian captain M.S. Dhoni walks in around the 42nd over and shows absolute lack of interest to carry on the responsibility of putting up a huge score. He just through his bat at anything and everything when there were still 8 eight overs left in the day. All the Indian batsmen just toppled for a very ordinary bowling from the English.
The Indian pace bowlers seemed to play the same rules and bowl just ordinary length deliveries allowing the English batsmen to stay through the game ahead of the required run rate. There were at least three occasions when Andrew Strauss and Ian Bell nicked the ball to the wicket-keeper and neither the bowler nor the captain appealed for a catch. The noise was pretty loud.
Finally to make the game interesting, wickets suddenly start to tumble in the last 10 overs and to make things more suspciously entertaining, they take the game to the last ball and end the game in a tie, leaving England with two wickets to spare. It was very obvious from the body language of the players that this game was completely stage-managed. There were no fiery looks exchanged, players were totally relaxed, bowlers never had a passion to the win the game. The emotions were totally absent which is unusual when things are not going your way.
There were more speculations to follow. Retired Australian cricketer Shane Warne had tweeted eight hours prior to the match that the Englandv/s India game would end in a tie. Needless to say, Shane Warne had already been caught involved in match-fixing during his cricketing days.
The games are once again under the scanner of the ICC and they have started investigating on spot-fixing. There doesn't seem to be a solution to this disease as it has been deeply rooted into the game.
There are cricket fans who turn up at the ground and willing to pay any amount of money just to get a seat at the stadium because they want to watch their favourite teams win and what do they get at the end of the day? - A result, which is already decided before the commencement of the match. Isn’t this betrayal of faith?
Source: http://sports.in.msn.com/cricket/2011CricketWorldCup/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4980377
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