Celebrated coach Vince Lombardi once said, “winning is not everything, it is the only thing”. Many sportsmen and women have taken this literally as they pursue victory at any cost. They sometimes use illegal or immoral/unethical methods to secure victory over their opponents. The history of sport is rife with such instances, making a mockery of “fair play”, a term that is often associated with sport.
Players will always try every trick in the book – and then some - to gain the upper hand. Cheating in sport is as old as time - Fred Lorz, a U.S. bricklayer, was about to be crowned the 1904 Olympic marathon champion in St Louis when it was discovered that he had actually spent 16 Km of the race in the passenger seat of a car.
The Australian ball-tampering scandal is just the latest in a series of scandals that have rocked the world of sport. Baggy Greens’ Captain Steve Smith is portrayed as arch-villain in the sorry saga. A tide of moral outrage has flowed worldwide ever since Smith admitted conspiring to tamper with the ball during the third test against South Africa in Cape Town last week. Australia lost the match as well as face, as details of the “trousergate” ball tampering saga emerged in the media. This kind of ball tampering also occurs in baseball.
Forget
Players often forget they are under intense scrutiny while on the field. They can perhaps escape the umpire’s all-too-human eye, but they can never escape the High Definition and Slo-Mo cameras, which are far more sensitive. Moreover, video zooming and magnification techniques can home in on even the tiniest detail. This is indeed how bowler Cameron Bancroft, Smith’s proxy in the sinister saga, was caught in the act.
Cricket is not the only sport where cheating has occurred or still occurs. There are several ways in which cheating occurs. Doping, or taking performance enhancing drugs is obviously a widespread practice in some sports and some countries. This gives an extra burst of energy and fitness to the athlete in question that others do not have. The problem was particularly acute in athletics, but occurs in other sports too. Even horses and greyhounds are given such drugs, sometimes with severe or fatal consequences to the innocent animals.
Dreaded “team orders” are another method of cheating. Even in the latest ball-tampering saga, the bowler was under instructions from the captain. Team orders are particularly prevalent in the high octane sport of Formula 1. The command “he is faster than you” is sometimes heard in F1, as a signal to a particular driver to slow down and let one of his team mates overtake him. There have even been deliberate crashes in F1 “designed” to help a particular team win. In 2007, McLaren was found guilty of stealing confidential data from rivals Ferrari and fined 50 million pounds. Some team orders may not be illegal per se, but are clearly unethical.
Faking injury is another common method of cheating, particularly, in full-contact sports such as Rugby. During a close-fought 2009 Heineken Cup quarterfinal between Harlequins and Leinster in the UK, Quins wing Tom Williams came off near the end with what turned out to be a fake blood injury to allow their kicker Nick Evans, who had gone off injured earlier, to come back on the field for the crucial final moments. They might have gotten away with it if Williams, having bitten on a blood capsule, had not winked at the bench in full view of the TV cameras as he feigned injury. Then, there are sleight-of-hand (literally) activities such as, Maradona’s infamous “Hand of God” goal (vs England) at the Soccer World Cup in 1986.
There are also instances when an umpire or match official suspects that a player is cheating, but he or she is actually not doing so. The best example from modern times is Sri Lankan bowler Muttaiah Muralitharan, who was ”called” for throwing the ball (chucking in cricketing parlance) by Australian umpire Darrell Hair at the Boxing Day Test of 1995 at the MCG. Comprehensive scientific tests later proved that Murali had a natural (birth) defect that didn’t allow him to straighten his elbow. The ICC cleared Murali, who went on to take a record 800 Test wickets.
But it would be wrong to apply the same brush on everyone. There are many honest men and women in sports who would not dream of cheating. For example, it is impossible to imagine Sri Lanka Greats Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene ever cheating. Sanath Jayasuriya once took what seemed to be a spectacular catch in a Test match and the batsman was already walking back to the pavilion, when he signalled that he had in fact “grassed” the ball. The batsman got a second life due to that honesty. There are many other instances across all types of sport that reaffirm our faith in fair play and honesty.
Why do sports people cheat in the first place ? The thirst for victory is not the only culprit here. Sport has become commercialized to such an extent today that amateur sport has disappeared for all intents and purposes. Today’s cricketers (and all other sports people) earn millions of dollars over the course of their careers, through on filed appearances as well as endorsements and advertisements. Add tournaments such as IPL to the mix, and we have a cricketing system that runs almost entirely on the pursuit of money.
This is where the factor of corruption comes in. Betting on sports, both legal and illegal, is widespread around the world. We have seen plenty of “turf accountants” here where punters can bet on their favourite horses and jockeys while catching the racing action live from UK and other countries. Likewise, one can bet legally in person and online, on almost all sports in most other countries.
Blatant
The problem is not the betting itself – but rather the manipulation of sports by illegal bookmakers. The most blatant form of this is “match-fixing”, where teams deliberately lose for financial inducements. This has plagued most sports from cricket to tennis. But roping in an entire team could be difficult, so the next best thing is “spot fixing” which is manipulating certain incidents within the period of play.
A good example is that “batsman X is going to score only 25 runs” or “bowler Y will get 4 wickets for 20 runs”. Bookmakers apparently “arrange” these incidents. However, the ICC’s strict anti-corruption measures have vastly reduced the scope for this kind of manipulation and players are now wary of anyone approaching them.
The very intense nature and demands of professional sport has made a mockery of traditional values such as, sportsmanship and fair play. But it is not too late to save sports. All Governments and anti-corruption agencies must work together to stamp it out. After all, win or lose, what matters is how you play the game.