Special to WorldTribune.com
By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com
NEW DELHI — It’s a toss-up what’s of more concern to India’s 1.2 billion people — border disputes with China or the arrests on bribery charges of stars of India’s most popular sport, the old British game of cricket.
India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh mingled firmness with smiles in a summit this week with China’s Premier Li Keqiang that focused on Chinese encroachment on Indian turf in the high Himalayan roof of India. The meeting was overshadowed, however, by non-stop revelations of ever more flagrant payoffs of celebrated athletes. That story, not the visit of the Chinese premier, was the unending topic of TV talk shows — an internal affair with far-reaching global implications.
The game of cricket is much too complicated for this baseball fan to comprehend, but there’s no misunderstanding the scope of an investigation involving teams in the Indian Premier League, the top level of cricket in India. The story, moreover, promises to get a lot bigger.
The reason the story is so disturbing from an international viewpoint is obvious. The racket is not about anything so obvious as throwing matches. Rather, it’s all about “spot fixing,” collaborating among players on giving away runs.
Think about it. “Spot fixing” is a racket that anyone on any team anywhere can play. What’s to keep a baseball pitcher from taking a bribe for walking the second batter in the third inning — or, to get a little more refined about it, for agreeing to throw high and outside on the first pitch against the first and third batters?
If all that seems totally out of the ballpark, remember last year’s scandal in the Korean Baseball League in which two pitchers for the LG Twins were accused of accepting bribes up to nearly $5,000 for issuing the first walks in games? They were exposed, charged and banned from professional ball in Korea, but the episode had tremendous ramifications for Korean baseball, now Korea’s most popular sport, as well as for baseball everywhere.
I communicated by email with Jerry Royster, a veteran of 16 years as a big league player in the U.S. before turning to managing and coaching. Royster, who managed the Lotte Giants in the KBL for two years, told me “it’s great” that investigators “get to the bottom of this horrible scandal.” One thing was certain, he added, “It never happened on my team.”
As far as I know, there’s never been a case of fixing U.S. baseball games since the Black Sox scandal of 1919 that ensnared eight players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, one of the game’s best hitters.
Pete Rose, arguably the greatest player of all time, was banned in 1989 for life from anything to do with the game for betting on his own team. He claimed never to have bet against his team either as a player or a manager, meaning that he was doing nothing to compromise his own performance or that of other players.
As proclaimed in screaming banner headlines across the top of page one of the Times of India, the world’s largest-selling English-language newspaper with a daily circulation of more than four million, dozens of athletes and bookies are under suspicion here for “spot fixing.”
“Spot fixing” undoubtedly is a rarity in most countries. The scandal in India, though, shows how the curse of gambling and fixing can spread before emerging on public display. Some of the lines in media reports might do well for scripts that the producers and directors of Bollywood, the prolific Indian motion motion picture industry, are sure to want to consider.
In one choice exchange, the wife of one of the arrested stars asks him, in Hindi, “Where are you getting so much money from,” to which he responds, “Don’t ask such questions, keep the money.”
Producers will have to be careful about the real-life roles of some of their own. One producer is already reported to have been a heavy better on matches.
The film version is sure to have more than a dash of juicy sex. Bookies reportedly sought to blackmail players by taping scenes with escorts in compromising mode with players. All that provided material for a headline in the Times of India, “Honey trap for tainted players?”
Whether arrests can stop the scandal from spreading is not clear. Lawyers are proclaiming the innocence of their clients, and legal experts say it will be hard to make many of the charges stick — an ill omen for the integrity of sports everywhere.
Not that people here are all that concerned. Turn on TV, and you’re able to choose between three or four matches. The scandals may be sensational but are not going to diminish the hold that cricket, like baseball in Korea, has on the masses.
Sports scandal entertainment dominates the headlines in an India not that obsessed with China added by World Tribune on
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