IPL spot-fixing episode simply a continuation of Cricket's age-old tradition

Cricket’s reputation as a ‘gentleman’s game’ is once again in tatters because of the most recent spot fixing scam involving three players of the Rajasthan Royals, even though the IPL is considered as a base form of cricketing endeavour in several circles.

The fact of the matter is that cricket never really was a ‘gentleman’s game’, but it was given this whitewash by the elites who played and ruled it, even giving rise to the phrase ‘it’s not cricket’ to denote some hanky-panky going on in any walk of life. But if one looks back at the game as it was played in the Merry England of yore, it becomes evident that betting and match fixing in cricket is as old as the game itself.

The English media (and Australian too) may have used this recent denouement on the sub-continent to pour scorn on the BCCI and its kitschy cash cow, the IPL; and rightly so! But let it be remembered that England was not only the inventor of the gilded game of flannelled fools but also of all the sharp practices that besmirch the game till today.

Betting and gambling on cricket, and by extension match fixing too, was the rule in the home of cricket in the 18^th and 19^th centuries rather than the exception, and the main sponsors of the game were gamblers. The leading players of the day played the game not for honour, team or country, but for the love of lucre and for wagers. The wealthy aristocrats who dabbled in cricket thought nothing of wagering their surplus liquid assets on the outcome of a match and cared two hoots about the spirit in which the game may have been played. At Hambledon, the fabled birth-place of modern cricket, 500 pounds a side matches were a normal affair and bets were placed on the outcome.

As the respected American cricket writer Mike Marquesse noted in his book “Anyone But England – Cricket & the National Malaise” (1994), this gambling aspect of the game, far from being hidden away in shame, “was promoted as one of its chief attractions” and “people played for profit and the composition of the teams shifted endlessly” (perhaps there were bets on team composition in those times too). So much so that the Church of England raised its index finger on cricket and declared it out as “it propagates a spirit of idleness…and is a most notorious and shameless breach of the laws, as it givens the most open encouragement to gambling”.

Cricket historian S M Toyne condemned the early aristocratic patrons for setting “a deplorable fashion in gambling” and other authorities of those times also highlighted the ills that plagued the game; it even provoked author and dramatist Mary Russell Mitford, “one of the most delightful and gentle souls that ever loved the game”, to flay its practitioners in 1832 for “making the noble game of cricket an affair of bettings and hedgings and many cheatings”.

Bookies flourished in this early era and they often hung about in front of the Lord’s pavilion during every big match with wads of cash on their person, offering juicy odds on the run of play and taking recourse to ‘expert’ opinion to get their equations right. These long ‘legs’ did not restrict themselves to straightforward business but used every trick in the book to guarantee their returns, including having players on their payroll to ensure that their money was not at risk. Things degenerated to such a level that bookies were finally banned from Lord’s and returned to the hallowed institution in 1974 after scoring almost a ton in absentia. Incidentally the ‘Mecca of cricket’ derives its name not from a great cricketer but from a property speculator, Thomas Lord, whose prime concern was the bottom line rather than the scoreboard, and used his institution to stage foot races, hopping contests, pigeon shooting, balloon ascents etc., in short, anything that would keep the turnstiles rolling.

As H S Altham wrote in his seminal work “A History of Cricket” (1926), “The truth is that money was still playing far too large a part in the conduct of the game; it was not so much that the larger stakes, for which many games were played, constituted a temptation for the unscrupulous match-maker but that cricket in the early 19^th century had been added to the field over which the activities of the bookmaker ranged. Side-bets (a variation of the current phenomenon of spot fixing?), often of very great sums, were the rule rather than the exception, and the morality of the game was being undermined by the influence of ‘sportsmen’ who neither understood nor cared for the science…”

And it was not only the small fry but also the big fish who fixed the game to make their moolah. One allegedly notorious cricketer was the legendary Rev Lord Frederick Beauclerk (1773-1850), a man possessed of prodigious ability with both bat and ball but cursed by a sharp tongue and violent temper. A later-day MCC president, Beauclerk was said to be “an unmitigated soundrel” “who thought nothing of cheating if the match happened to go against him” and he was said to have “bought and sold matches as though they were lots at an auction”.

In June 1817, Beauclerk captained an England XI against 22 of Nottingham at Nottingham and his side lost by 30 runs. That notorious match, on which huge bets were placed, was marred by allegations of match fixing from both teams and Beauclerk was able to produce witnesses who implicated his arch rival William Lambert. As Altham revealed, that match was “sold” and “sold not by one side or the other, but by men playing for both, only as the historian remarks, with a satisfaction with which we may sympathise, the Nottingham men were not so well served, for they did not succeed in losing the match”.

In a ‘Dark Chapter’ from his book “The Cricket Field” (1851), Rev James Pycroft gives “positive proof that cricketers did take money to play badly at the latter end of the 18^th century”. In his book Pycroft quoted a witness as saying: “You see, sir…matches were bought and matches were sold, and gentlemen who meant honestly lost large sums of money, till the rouges beat themselves at last. They overdid it; they spoilt their own trade…” The hold Reverend himself confessed that he joined two others and sold a match to recover 10 pounds he had lost as a victim of a fixed match.

So rampant was the scourge of fixing that after many a match, those who had lost their money would berate the players for underperforming and all sorts of accusations would fly around about bowlers deliberately bowling long hops and fielders dropping catches. Pycroft further revealed that when two big bookies fell out at Lord’s, the heated exchanges between the two ended in fists flying all over the place.

So the current hoo ha over spot fixing needs to be tempered with the realization that the latest episode is nothing but a continuation of the hoary tradition of this un-gentlemanly game!