Blaming Pakistan misses the point
Posted on 31/08/2010Oliver Holt, writing in the Mirror, sounds a note of caution this morning over the spot-fixing controversy. He believes that it is not just the players who should be blamed, as it's a fair bet that gambling is the real culprit.
The blame heaped upon Pakistan for bringing cricket to its knees yesterday missed the point.Singling out Pakistan and identifying England's opponents as rogue conspirators in an otherwise unblemished landscape was an easy way out.
The may be differing degrees of vulnerability and guilt in the cases of Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif but the fact remains they are the symptom, not the cause.The cause, the common denominator in all these scandals, is the influence of the betting industry.
Gambling weaves its way through world sport like a particularly virulent and aggressive form of ivy seeking out the cracks and weaknesses in the brickwork of a building.
Most of the problems stem from illegal betting based on the Indian sub-continent, betting that concentrates increasingly on so-called micro-betting or spot betting, concerning a particular passage of play.
The abuse of betting and the corruption of sportsmen by gambling syndicates is as old as sport itself.
But the relatively recent advent of spread betting has made that abuse easier to perpetrate.
And even if the bookmaking industry in this country is blameless in this scandal it would be disingenuous to claim it has not harmed sport. Gambling in sport is ubiquitous.