Same old villains with new images

The ABC have, somehow, still managed to hold down the image of being a chauvinistic secret society after their belated revelations how Shane Warne and Mark Waugh collected money from bookies to pass on such hot tips as ground and pitch conditions and weather reports.

Perhaps, however, the ACB are more convincing villains by finally admitting to the cover up, while their fining of Warne and Warne is a light weight matter compared to what normally comes from their offices at that vast building known as the MCG.

Well, 20 years ago, whether Packer is, or was, a creep was no longer the real issue; he had succeeded in winning the ACB contract and his commercial panjandrums were making a mint out of the game. What was starting to count was how the issue of the new-age professionalism on a word-wide basis, and the release of player power were powerful interacting forces. The bigger bucks was becoming more important.

Brian Lara's West Indies side, split as it was at the start of the tour of South Africa over the industrial action for a better deal, is one of the many areas where player power has been used to create an image of strength, when in fact it is one where some players have benefitted at the expense of others.

Naturally there are different opinions about the upwardly mobile forces which have governed our lives since May 1994.

If, say, John Arlott was right when he wrote in the mid-1960s that changes in the game reflected changes in society then our recent social blessings have indeed been mixed. This does not mean that those in the ICC, Pakistan Cricket Board, ACB or UCB for that matter should be allowed to shuffle their moral responsibility and compromise the game because some guys earned a few extra dollars by being asked to hand over information which could have been collected from weather reports and keeping an eye on newspaper reports.

What we have here is that the sub-continental powers want to take some heat out of their own inquisition by placing focus on a new area of discontent. And banning players is not going to help; whether is for two or five years or life. It's a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it started to sink.

Pakistan, whether they like it or not, have long given the impression of crying wolf as the administration in that country fails to sort out a simple problem of the truth over match fixing claims, many of which are being substantiated.

The on-going probe into the match-fixing claims is still the stop story in the game during 1998 and will spill over to 1999. Another issue is the Windies industrial action and what can be learnt from such disruptions of tour programmes. Certainly the way they have played and the results acheived they should rather pay the extra cash to help their own development schemes.

Perhapas Arlott is right and the backstabbing by politicians of the transformation and development systems is a sign of the current social ills. It is easier to lay blame than it is to find the answer and develop the cure.

Hopefully 1999 will be a year where the politicians learn that nothing is to be gained by firebrand tactics.

Hopefully it will be a year where all will learn to work together for the betterment of the sport and not egocentric belief.

A happy 1999 to all.