Acknowledging the problem

Rashid Latif's letter to the ICC is significant for one reason: he implies that fixing is still a problem in the game. Not matchfixing, as most people think of it, but what he terms "Fancy Fixing" - fixing elements of matches without necessarily affecting the result or arousing suspicion.

This is not new by itself. It is fairly common knowledge that a lot of cricket betting focusses on micro-aspects of a game - how many runs a bowler will concede, how many boundaries a batsman will hit etc. But what is significant is that now a current international captain has chosen to confirm what has been suspected for quite a while. For obvious reasons, Latif cannot name any names. But would he have bothered to write this letter if he did not know for sure that 'Fancy Fixing' does indeed take place?

What grants this letter further credibility is that it comes from a man who put more than just his career at stake when he first blew the whistle in the mid-'90s. Few people took him seriously then; he has since been vindicated in full.

The solutions that Latif offers on 'Fancy Fixing', however, will not resolve the problem. Even if the 15-overs-restriction rule is annulled, betters - and fixers - will find some other aspect of the game to exploit. How many runs a bowler will concede in his quota of 10 (or 12, as Latif suggests) overs. How many quick singles a particular pair of batsmen will take. How long a batsman (particularly a hard-hitting strokeplayer) will take to hit his first boundary. The possibilities of finding things to bet on are as endless as the possibilities in cricket. Latif suggests eliminating a couple of these possibilities; but more exist, and there can be no end to them.

The first step to finding a solution to a problem, though, is acknowledging that the problem exists. Latif's letter should force the authorities to accept that those dark days of bookies bribing cricketers and subverting the game are not necessarily over. They have it on the word of a current Test captain. They will ignore it at their peril.