We in the New Zealand team knew without a shadow of doubt that our ex-colleague was cheating
“Did you?” “Huh?” “Did you, you know, do some dumb things while you were playing?” I was sitting across from Lou Vincent, the ex-New Zealand cricketer and ex-team-mate of mine. We were in a curry house, not far from the HAC Ground in London, where we had both just played in a charity Twenty20. It was Aug 30, 2012 and I hadn’t seen Lou for a long time; in a lot of ways, intentionally. I didn’t really want to be seen with him, associated with him or considered a mate of his.
We did, and do have, one thing in common; we both suffer with mental illness. That was the basis for a lot of what we talked about that day.
Lou had been touring in a camper van spreading his story of MI and raising awareness. What he was doing seemed great, but what he had been doing wasn’t.
I knew he had been up to no good. It becomes evident, as a player, that what you see is not always real. That moment you learn that wrestling on TV isn’t real. It is acting. It is hard to believe at first and then, when you have watched a lot, or been around it endlessly, you see it for what it really is. There is no going back.
On a Test tour of Bangladesh, 2008, we, the New Zealand team watched a lot of the Indian Cricket League; the ‘rebel’ T20 competition in its first year. We watched some of the most unbelievable cricket. Unbelievable in a way that we could not believe how obvious what was going on: leaving and or padding up to straight ones, run outs by massive distances in curious circumstances, batsmen playing out maidens, no-balls and wides just too big and too often to be natural mistakes. It looked a shambles.
And this included Lou Vincent. He had walked away from a New Zealand contract to take part in a lucrative league. We knew what was going on.
Without a shadow of doubt Lou was fixing. From our Bangladesh telephone sims (when touring, typically, we buy or are provided with a local sim), players who had Lou’s number would text him with some rather unpleasant messages about what he was doing. He was called a “fixer”, a “cheat” and many more unprintable things.
Lou denied any involvement. I asked him again if he had “fixed”, if he had been a part of it. He straight out rejected my line of questions. I showed him a scorecard from a game I had watched live. I had the scorecard saved as a bookmark on my phone browser so that we could talk specifics. I showed it to him. He put his one run from nine balls, playing out a first-over maiden, to just good bowling. I called that “rubbish”.
Lou is a quality player. For a fix he promised to score, 30 inside three overs. He failed, but a player with that quality does not score one from nine balls. I have not spoken to Lou since.
It happens here, in the UK. More than in just the matches we have read about from Lou’s accounts.
I was commentating on a match at Chelmsford and Danish Kaneria, the Essex and Pakistan leggie, bowled one of the biggest wides I have ever seen. It was the first ball of a spell. In the box we were flabbergasted at how flagrant it was.
In the previous two World Twenty20s I watched a highly respected player swap his bat, make sure that the cameras caught it by taking a long time to complete the act, on three occasions. A wicket fell in the next over, either him or his partner. A coincidence? I don’t think so. A change of bat can be a sign to a bookie that the fix is on.
I have seen others too. The ones outlined by Vincent. I watched the Sussex v Kent game which we now know contained spot-fixing and I sensed something was up.
The issue is, knowing and proving. Should I, as an ex-player and now commentator, be reporting suspect activity to the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit? Maybe I should.
But, I feel it is so rife that they would get overrun by what I see as suspect actions which have become so blatant that it is hard to believe they even care about our game anymore.
Iain O’Brien played 22 Tests for New Zealand and now works as a BBC commentator based in the UK
it is informative post for sport's.This post publish new important news of cricket.This post article is important and helpful.Thanks a lot for share your great post.
ReplyDelete