Warne’s Prediction, Bookies’ land and Match Fixing Drama

I wrote “England played exceptionally good but I doubt the result...:-/” as my facebook status when the last English pair did not run to earn a victory. As a cricketer, it remained a mystery for me until I heard the breaking news. Warne’s prediction, although it reached me late, resolved the whole matter. The breaking news was; “Shane Warne wrote on his Twitter account: 'Looking forward to the game between India and England today (Sunday) should be a cracker. My prediction - a tie'
'I think Warne is a genius to have predicted that way (a tie). What more can I say,' Strauss told reporters late Sunday, after the group B league match ended in a dramatic tie at the Chinnaswamy.
Soon after the match ended in a tie indeed, Warne tweeted again: 'Before u (you) think there was something untoward re prediction of a tie, thought it was going to be a cracker-tie was tongue in cheek-but right.'”

This was the news of the evening…

The question is; is it just a co-incidence that a super star who has also been involved in such cases in his past, still playing the most controversial league (IPL) and has good relationship with the land of bookies “predicts” something unusual and it happens as he says.

Predictions in cricket are normally about victory or about the close contest, not about the tie match. It is not soccer or hockey where the tie matches are routine and most of the teams manage this because of their defensive game plan. Cricket, especially, one day cricket is gives results but here, it was a different case altogether.

Let me add few more points with reference to this match. Cricketers from India and Pakistan know how deeply match/spot fixing is rooted to this land. The players meet bookies of the grass root level at the grass root level. They smell all the abnormal changes in the game and highlight them immediately even if they do not have any tangible evidences to prove of what they say.

The same was observed yesterday. After Sachin Tendulkar’s outstanding inning, nobody knows what happened to strong Indian batting line and they could not survive for complete 50 overs. For me, it was nothing different as I believe, Indian batting line up is over-rated because of their media and they cannot survive when they need to. They perform well in favorable conditions and same happened yesterday. But their comeback was really amazing. It is not that from nowhere they came back and starting performing good but the case is different.

First of all, Indian players especially when they are bowling hardly fight back. It was news for me when I witnessed a dent to the batting line up of England, which has real guts to win the game by 7 wickets. But it could be believed as a rare chance however someone who did this all was absolutely not worthy of it. Had he been Wasim, Waqar, McGrath or Shane Warne, I would have believed it without having any doubts but those who did this all were Zaheer Khan, someone averaging around 30 runs/per wicket and never enjoyed the status of being a real fast bowler. I could even believe this if the last ball was not so suspicious…

Munaf Patel, averaging 29runs/wicket, was unable to save 14 runs from the tale-enders but he managed to save 2 runs at the last ball. There is a big question mark on the mid-wicket conference of the batsmen, the fumbled save of Yusuf Pathan at mid-off and above all, on not making any attempt of second run.
Being a cricketer, I believe, there is no single cricketer in the world who does not take a chance to win the match (even at the cost of his own wicket) at the last ball. Batmen always agree to run, even blindly to the target, just to take a chance, to confuse the opponent and get a risk from an expected over-through or any such miracle. There are less than zero percent of chances that after making 338^th run, batsmen go to the fielding side start congratulating them without making any effort. No one can believe that they remain satisfied after leveling the scores where winning the game was not difficult.

There could be lots of psychological reasons of not defeating India at a place where people do not clap on a cricketing shot of the opponent and start hitting them or injuring them when they win the game even in the presence of a huge security force. Who can forget the Semi Final between Sri Lanka and India in the world cup 1996 and test match between Pakistan and India in 1999 when player had to leave the ground because of Indian supporters? But this is not the only case, the question is, who asked English batsmen not to score a winning run. The case is not that simple.

I would rather raise three important questions before closing the debate;

1.    Will ICC get this match investigated?

2.    Will ICC punish if the cricketers found guilty?

3.    Above all, at the land of bookies, will ICC assure the whole cricket playing nations that the big tournament will remain clean?

4.    And that no Suresh Raina will be given indemnity for not being a Pakistani?

5.    Or the culprits will be saved for the greater good of the “game”?