Some of Australian and Pakistan top cricketers are currently standing trial for accepting bribes and ‘fixing’ major cricket matches in August last year. The matches in question were being played at Lord’s, which is one of the most famous commercial properties in the world, and is seen by many as the ‘Home of Cricket’. But cricket is not the only feature at the commercial property, as they also offer world class meeting and conference facilities.
The cricketers’ corruption only became public knowledge after an undercover reporter, Mazher Mahmood who worked for the late News of the World posed as a rich businessman who was interested in adding some glamour to the matches. Mr Mahmood met with Mazhar Majeed (an agent), Mohammed Asif and Salman Butt (Pakistani cricketers) and secretly filmed the conversation. But with the source coming from The News of the World, can this really be trusted?
The secret recordings detailed Mr Majeed expressing that fixing cricket matches had been going on for a number of years, “It’s been happening for centuries. It’s been happening for years. Wasim, Waqar, Ijaz Ahmed, Moin Khan – they all did it.”
“I’ve been doing this with the Pakistani team now for about two-and-a-half years, and we’ve made masses and masses of money. You can make absolute millions,” Mr Majeed added.
Mr Majeed also told the undercover reporter that Pakistan had one game planned that they would intentionally lose, “We’ve got one result already planned, and that’s coming within the next three-and-a-half weeks… Pakistan will lose.”
However, it was not only the Pakistan cricket team that was accused. The Australian team have been accused of fixing ‘brackets’. This is when people bet on a specific period during a match, such as the number of wickets. Mr Majeed expressed, “The Australians, they are the biggest. They have 10 brackets a game.”
Is cricket going up in flames?
Are Australian fan shamed?
So why would sportsmen risk their careers to fix a game? As with most deceitful actions, money is involved. Fixing a match could potentially be worth around one million pounds, depending on what kind of match is being played, as Mr Majeed put across, “It would cost between £50,000 and £80,000 for information about a bracket, £400,000 to fix the result of a 20-20 game, £450,000 for a one-day international and £1 million to rig the outcome of a Test match.”
The commercial property in London, home to Lord’s Cricket Ground has been established since 1814 at St John’s Wood. However this is not the first cricket ground for Lord’s. The commercial property started in Dorset Square in 1787 and moved to Marylebone Bank in 1811, before moving to St John’s Wood where it remains today.
But with the current controversy surrounding the sport, will the numbers of spectators and bookmakers be affected? And furthermore, will the sports reputation ever recover? Like us, you will have to watch this space.
