Cricket:England hurried to victory at Lord's this morning by an innings and 225 runs over Pakistan to wrap up the series 3-1 with a day to spare. Yet celebrations were eerily muted for what appeared a significant achievement as Andrew Strauss' team chalked up their seventh win in eight tests.
It was their misfortune to do so against opponents batting under the cloud of ‘spot-fixing’ allegations and who — Umar Akmal’s incongruously defiant 40-ball 50 apart — surrendered so tamely to be bowled out for 147 in their second innings that it was near impossible to avoid the conclusion their minds were not properly on the job.
Pakistan faced an apparently hopeless task, their only feasible ambition to retrieve some damaged pride and a little of their reputation with spirited if inevitably vain efforts on the pitch.
Instead they lurched still further from an already perilous 41 for four, losing four more wickets for 32 runs before Umar dominated stands of 24 and then 50 with numbers 10 and 11.
Graeme Swann’s figures suffered a little, but he still finished with five for 62 — and nine wickets in the match — to put his name on the honours board.
The scoreboard was perhaps still the least of Pakistan’s troubles, however, following last night’s newspaper allegations of attempts to defraud bookmakers and the subsequent arrest of a 35-year-old man — from outside the squad — in relation to the matter.
The Pakistan team manager has confirmed captain Salman Butt, teenage bowler Mohammad Aamer, Mohammad Asif and wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal were also interviewed by police at the team hotel last night.
This morning’s News of the World named bowlers from their team who they alleged agreed to deliver no-balls to order.
Spot-fixing differs from outright match-fixing in one crucial regard — whereas match-fixing sees the entire result of a sporting contest manipulated, spot-fixing relates to specific incidents within the game.
As such, it can take just one member of a team to facilitate a fix, rather than requiring the complicity of key players, making a con harder to detect as well as more cost-effective.
Today’s reports concern the timing of no-balls, with certain Pakistan bowlers alleged by the newspaper to have deliberately overstepped the crease on pre-determined occasions.
Markets on no-balls and wides are among those which may be easy to manipulate, with little effort required to produce ‘errors’ at the prescribed moment. While the nature of cricket produces a proliferation of the kind of incidents favoured by spot-fixers, the problem is by no means confined to one particular sport.
Markets on the number of corners or the time of the first throw-in or free-kick in a football match provide further examples of areas open to exploitation. Former Southampton forward Matt Le Tissier admitted in his autobiography, Taking Le Tiss, that he had attempted to take advantage of spread betting markets in a 1995 game against Wimbledon by making money on the time of the first throw-in.
Le Tissier “bought” the under one minute time slot and attempted to spray the ball out of play directly from the kick-off — but team-mate Neil Shipperley, unaware of the bet, kept the underhit pass in play and unwittingly sparked a frantic dash by Le Tissier and a co-conspirator to get the ball out of play and reduce their losses.