Anjali Mody of the Indian Express: on Dalmiya"s tail

We had become slack. All of us. We had forgotten the warning about eternal vigilance. Consequently, the image of cricket as the model of integrity has been broken. Only time will tell whether future generations, when they say it"s not cricket, will mean the opposite of what they used to.

We had come to think that ICC stood for Incompetent, Careless and Chaotic. Now we know that ICC, under the presidency of Jagmohan Dalmiya from 1997 to 2000, was meticulously careful. When they kept proclaiming that there was no such thing as match-fixing, and refused to do anything about it until the emergency meeting of May this year, they were not being stupid at all. Far from it. They were fully aware of what was going on, which is precisely why they did nothing.

Cricket administration has traditionally been in the hands of amateur committees. It has been so strapped for cash that it has relied on well-intentioned volunteers to keep it going. Our fatal assumption was that everywhere, even in Asia, these were honest men, bumbling perhaps, but with the interests of the game at heart. So it was that cricket administrators bent upon a different game were persuaded to drive a coach-and-horses though the old dispensation and thoroughly abuse it, especially when TV moguls began to offer millions of dollars to stage offshore one-day tournaments. We should have known better, and done more to stop Dalmiya during his term of office to protect the game we love.

Boards everywhere have come badly out of match-fixing. They took the lead not in eradicating it, but in pretending it did not exist. The Australian Cricket Board set the trend by covering up Mark Waugh and Shane Warne. An open inquiry in 1994 and some exemplary punishments would have made us aware of what to look out for, deterred players in other countries, and set a benchmark for dealing with culprits as they were unearthed.

I would be surprised if the West Indian Board"s inquiries into the various allegations involving Brian Lara were no-expense-spared rigorous. The Sri Lankan Board were no less passive while Aravinda de Silva assembled a fleet of imported cars, including his favourite Ferrari 355 Spyder. The South African Board appear to have done nothing yet to supply voice samples of Hansie Cronje to Delhi police - and seem all too willing to wind up the King Commission before any more damage is done to their poor Afrikaner victim. The ECB were wrong not to have flown Alec Stewart home from Pakistan in November for detailed questioning about the allegations that he had accepted £5000 from the Indian bookie Mukesh Gupta - instead they simply asked him a few questions on the phone. Justice should have been seen to be done or, at any rate, an inquiry begun.

Yet if Lord MacLaurin had not called for an emergency meeting after Cronje made his first grudging admission, it is quite possible that ICC would have kept everything under their carpet until the end of Dalmiya"s term. After all, they did nothing about Rashid Latif"s detailed allegations of match-fixing; and anyone who could deny a link between match-fixing and the proliferation of one-day internationals and offshore venues could deny anything. This is exactly what Dalmiya and David Richards did after the emergency meeting.

But India"s Board has been made to look more culpable than any other. The sight so many old ostriches, their heads stuck willfully in the sand, might have been comic in other circumstances. Let us not think for a moment that they were unaware of the game that Mohammad Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja, Ajay Sharma and Manoj Prabhakar were up to. It seems that Justice Chandrachud, of the famously fatuous report which concluded three years ago that allegations of match-fixing lacked substance and were unjustified, also knew what was going on in hotel rooms and dressing-rooms.

India"s Central Bureau of Investigation have made up for what the BCCI failed to do. Their report may have its weaknesses but for a few months" work without great resources it has to rate pretty high. When I interviewed its author in the very office where Azhar had confessed, I did not doubt the integrity brought to bear upon the subject. Was Kapil Dev exonerated because of political pressure from above? Absolutely not was the answer: Jadeja, in fact, is better connected in higher places than Kapil. Kapil may have had business dealings which appear murky, but there was no concrete evidence to link him with match-fixing. He had also offered unconditionally to take a lie-detector tests, whereas Prabhakar had refused to take one in front of Kapil while he - Prabhakar- made his allegations.

There have been rumours of a close relationship between Kapil Dev and Jadeja, who was apparently like a son to Kapil. It has been suggested that Prabhakar might have been jealous, though that may have been no more than a jolly good joke to lighten the appalling gravity of this subject: Prabhakar wanted to muscle in on their relationship to make it a Manoj a trois.

Certain truths about human nature have become evident during the game"s gravest crisis. One is that good people are always ready to speak out while evil ones prefer silence. Several witnesses have suddenly refracted their confession 24 hours later, no doubt under duress from the heavy mob. Another truth is that we are far more willing to believe ill about people from other countries and races than about our own.

If there were a roll of honour for vigilance in the face of match-fixing and for outspoken comment about it, one Indian magazine - its London correspondent, a woman, has been the ICC"s scourge - and one Pakistani woman would top it.

In its issue following the CBI report which exposed Azhar et al, Outlook, claimed reasonably enough:

 We started it. And now, three years after Outlook broke the biggest story in cricket history, as this sordid saga heads towards resolutions and justice, we feel somewhat happy and infinitely sad. Every week, ever since we faintly sniffed cricketer"s dark underbelly in early 1997, we have hoped against hope that all that we were hearing, seeing and uncovering was fiction, that we were, as officials and players have consistently accused us of, imagining things. Yet, we knew every week that our worst fears were true and we had a duty for beyond what is dictated by journalism, to attempt to clean up the finest game ever invented. We had to go on, look the horror in the face.

 Between April and July 1997, our correspondents chased the story across the world, from the mansions of Johannesburg to dingy Mumbai police stations. Then, literally two days before the July 30 issue went to press, we found Manoj Prabhakar. We printed what he had to say about Kapil Dev, along with our meticulously-reported expose that named names (all of which have been confirmed by the CBI, including that of Mukesh Gupta; yes, we mentioned 'MK" in July 1997). There was furore: enraged denials, lawsuit threats and lawsuits; and then, because the lid just kept jumping off the boiling kettle, an inquiry committee comprising a former Supreme Court chief justice. Our correspondents went and testified. We were then compelled to write that the Chandrachud Committee looked suspiciously like a cover-up attempt. We were correct.

Outlook omits to say that they gave undue credence to Prabhakar, who turned out to be half-poacher, half-gamekeeper; and that their leading investigator came and went in mysterious circumstances. But overall they were a light in the darkness.

So was Fareshteh Gati-Aslam, not a familiar name to most cricket followers, but she is a deserving of a place in the annals as any writer or player. She was a graduate of commerce in Karachi who became a cricket journalist, smitten - as not a few girls were - by the deeds and looks of Imran Khan. She was first attracted in her childhood, when her best friend had her cousin - the lithe and dashing Asif Iqbal- to stay.

Fareshteh Gati-Aslam: the lone voice speaking out match-fixing in Pakistan

I asked Mody whether she threw darts at a board with Dalmiya"s face on it? That would be much too tame, she replied

Imagine being the lone voice speaking out about match-fixing in Pakistan. A female voice too, and from the Parsi community that is now down to 2000 souls in the whole country. She has had lawyers" letters, admonitory phone calls, and Wasim Akram suing her in the Sind High Court. She"s had high blood pressure and nights of talking angrily about match fixing, both awake and asleep. She is angry because she sees the people of Pakistan walking round the streets sadly the day after a match has been mysteriously lost. With respect to Islam, cricket binds the country more than anything. The success of a young nation"s cricket team means so much to so many who have so little.

Fareshteh Gati was helped by the fact that her husband - the Aslam bit - is also one of her editors on The News, an independent (most Pakistani papers take political side and are either pro-Bhutto or pro-Sharif) newspaper. She had his support in pointing out the inconsistencies, the inexplicable batting collapses, the outright lies. But this story does not have a happy ending. She has become disillusioned with the game and the way it has been played by certain Pakistani cricketers in recent years. She may not be alone.

Also worthy of mention is another woman journalist. (I was going to say crusader, but that would be inappropriate as none of the leaders of the fight against match-fixing are Christians.) Anjali Mody has been the staff correspondent of the Indian Express in London. Slowly and doggedly, when other work has permitted, she has pieced together Dalmiya"s business and cricketing activities - so far as they are known. She cheerfully admits to an obsession that she has whether she threw darts at a dartboard with Dalmiya"s face on it? That would be much too tame, she replied.

Mody tripped up Dalmiya after he had said he had no part in negotiating the TV rights for the 1998 ICC Knockout tournament in Dhaka. She asked David Richards at the press conference after the ICC"s AGM on July 3, a Monday, if he would reply to the 10 questions she had sent him relating to his involvement in the same negotiations. I"ll ring you on Wednesday, Richards promised. A message left with her secretary answered part of one question. Six months on, the retiring Chief executive has yet to reply to the rest. Perhaps Sir Paul Condon will find him more forthcoming.

Men invented the pastime of hitting a moving ball with a piece of wood, with all its physical pleasures and mental satisfactions. Without doing so for the thrill of the chase or to make a name, women have done more than their fair share in defending it.

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