By Carol Grisanti in Islamabad
Shame and anger best describes the feelings of many Pakistanis to fresh allegations of match fixing by their national cricket stars. When the “News of the World,” a popular British tabloid, exposed a scam on Sunday involving a conspiracy by members of Pakistan’s cricket team to defraud U.K. bookmakers, it left Pakistanis reeling.
“I’m embarrassed to say that I’m Pakistani,” said Mustafa, a junior high student in Islamabad.
Samiullah Khan, a 30-year-old computer technician, said he felt personally betrayed. “I am disappointed,” he said. “Our team should hang their heads in shame; they have brought disgrace upon themselves and upon all of us.”
The “News of the World” said it paid more than $200,000 to a middleman to deliver details on 3 “no-balls” — balls that are called foul by umpires — in the test match, which ended on Sunday in a stunning defeat for Pakistan. A test match can last up to 5 days where each team may play twice in two innings to win, draw or lose.
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The newspaper’s account, with an accompanying video, alleged that the two star bowlers, Mohammed Amir and Mohammed Asif, were paid to deliver the “no balls” at the exact points in the match as agreed upon with the fixer. It’s called “spot fixing” or “micro fixing.” It’s inside information on when players agree to act in a predetermined manner, usually at a particular time, to influence betting. While “spot fixing” often does not affect a game’s outcome, it can still earn millions for syndicates setting odds on specific details of the game or the players.
The third largest bookmaker in Pakistan was skeptical about the “News of the World” expose and thought the U.K. media was blowing the whole incident out of proportion. “On this video they are showing an exchange of £150,000 ($230,000) to spot fix,” he said. I have my doubts about this man in the video because I am sure that if the players were involved in this, then the rates would have been much higher. It would have been many millions of pounds not a mere hundred plus, so something is wrong here” he pointed out.
Over the weekend, the story snowballed into headline news in the Pakistani media. For the first time in more than a month, the devastating floods that have devoured a fifth of the country and affected more than 20 million people were pushed aside on the TV channels and in the daily newspapers. The video of the “News of the World” sting was played over and over again.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Yusuf Reza Gilani, said the allegations “had caused a huge embarrassment for the entire nation. I am hurt.”
Pakistan’s president, Asif Zardari, ordered that he be apprised of the ongoing investigation in the U.K. after Scotland Yard was brought in to interrogate the team’s players and arrested the middleman, Mazhar Majid, on suspicion of fraud.
Cricket is the national obsession in Pakistan, almost as revered to Pakistanis as their religion. Young boys and old men — even the Taliban — bat the ball in parks and in parking lots all across the country. For most Pakistanis, weighed down by food shortages, electricity shortages, the unimaginable losses wreaked upon the country by the monsoon floodwaters and the ever present threat of terrorism, this cricket scandal seemed to be the last straw.
But this was not the first time that Pakistan’s cricket team have been involved in scandal. Cricket scams became so common in Pakistan that in 1999 the government of Nawaz Sharif appointed a judicial committee to investigate charges of match fixing. Many of the national players were fined and banned for life.
Fahad, a university student in Islamabad, seemed to sum up the national mood. “They should be hanged,” he said. “I am more angry than sad and I think they should be hanged when they come back to Pakistan.”
Fakhar Rehman and Shahid Qazi contributed to this report.
