A victory as historic as Imran Khan's in 1992

“This too shall pass” as a maxim is hard to ignore. It’s harder to ignore such a maxim when one writes the words ‘Pakistan’, ‘fixing’ and ‘Cricket’ in the same sentence.

Former Pakistan captain Salman Butt and sometimes-maverick and sometimes demure fast-bowler Mohammad Asif were found guilty at the Southwark Crown Court. (A third, Mohammad Amir, had already pleaded guilty before the caseopened). What were the trio found guilty off? The two fast-bowlers, with instructions from the captain, had accepted to bowl a couple of no-balls in a particular afternoon of a particular Test-match. Does this seem huge enough? It does not. Ironically enough, the only ones who seem worse off than before the fixing itself is the now defunct News of The World, the tabloid which broke the story.

The convicted cricketers may even argue that bowling no-balls will by no means affect the outcome of any Test match. Their guilt, which has been proved beyond reasonable doubt, is relatively small when compared to other fixing controversies that have plagued the game. But this as a judgement will be viewed as a victory for the game because it sets a deterrent for fixers, match-fixers and spot-fixers likewise.

Imagine this scenario: a cricketer wakes up this morning to the possibility of being jailed for up to seven years irrespective of whether he was a captain or the next big thing in cricket. You do something fraudulent. You are going to be jailed, mister. Now, that’s a very strong message that the jurors have sent out to the cricketing world. But it is not really possible to man every game that is happening in the world. One will have to take chances and accept that while there will be some corruption going on somewhere, in some remote corner, let’s have a system where we police the game at the highest level: ODIs, T20Is and Test matches and work our way down.

You find and catch the fixers and their agents at the highest level. Chances are the nexus and foundations break and the also-rans come out to face the law. It’s a bit like blackjack or poker in a casino at Las Vegas: You find the master, you find the card reader who is bankrupting all the casinos.

The ‘BBC 5 Radio Live’ this morning have been asking callers this question: ‘How damaged is Cricket’? A caller, with all the acquired wisdom, just said ‘Cricket is doomed’. If anything, this is the second wind that the ICC needed in its fight against corruption in cricket.

Cricket might have taken a dangerous pathway if the verdict at the Crown Court was ‘not guilty’. While it wouldn’t have lost its identity, it would have alienated itself with the die-hard fans who preach white-coloured clothing against the mindless jamboree of T20. These fans, the ones who sit in front of the television sets all day long to examine whether the cracks have widened enough on the 4^th day of a Test, are the last meaningful connects to how cricket was being watched some two to three decades back. A ‘not guilty’ verdict would have killed them for ever. Not, not because they would have stopped watching. They will go on and on. It will be because there would have been no difference between a young tearaway testing the batsmen with chin music and Shawn Michaels chin-musicing ‘The Undertaker’ at Wrestle Mania 50.

It’s natural that other games which we have come to watch over and over again – Graham Thorpe’s match-winning knock in the dark in Karachi being an example – will be examined by the ICC and its auxiliary machineries for any evidence of fixing. The chances are even if those games where faked by any parties directly involved with betting syndicates, the guiltwon’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. So it’s best if we all stop this knee-jerking towards ceasing to worship those matches which made cricket a pure joy to watch.

But Michael Vaughan, a writer for ‘The Telegraph’ for these days, has voiced his concerns already regarding the Karachi Test match. It was one of the most iconic images that Test cricket had produced this side of 2000but the former English captain writes,

“For instance, go back to the Test we won against Pakistan in Karachi in December 2000. They collapsed from a strong position to leave us a small total to chase, which we did as night descended. It was a very surreal atmosphere and I remember feeling that there was something not right about it at the time. Was it just a dodgy wicket or were there other forces at play?”

A cynic would readily say that was fixed. An optimist would say Pakistan did what Pakistan does best: “Their willingness to implode has been well documented and that is exactly what happened 11 years back”. While nobody can fault Vaughan for speaking his mind on the matter because the human psyche tends to doubt rather than seeking to clarify, naysayers at this moment in time should be pushed to the background as cricket celebrates one of its most historic verdicts off the field of play.

Last year, Butt, the former Pakistan captain, in an interview to the Guardian, had said,