Sex and the Gentleman's game

Roshan Paul

From the heights of political skull-duggery to the lows of illicit sex, recent off-field cricket news has pretty much covered the gamut. But, after the MCA elections tamasha, which to you non-Bombay based cricket fans out there in Readerland must have been about as fascinating as watching Adrian Griffith and Jimmy Adams bat together, the latest scandal to rock world cricket is, at the very least, infinitely more interesting.

For the unaware, here is the story in brief. Former Pakistani batsmen Qasim Omar has alleged that Australian bookmakers used to provide call-girls for touring cricket players in the mid-1980s in exchange for below-par performances. The women, who were provided through two madams in Sydney, were mostly Australian, but there were also women from Pakistan and China.

Omar has provided the ICC's Anti-corruption Unit (ACU) with a list of names, addresses and phone numbers of 23 prostitutes, including a doctor, nurse, travel agent and a glamorous television presenter. The deals were struck in hotels and restaurants in Sydney and Melbourne. To further sweeten the pie, the bookmaker also paid up to AUS$ 10,000, and gifted alcohol and jewelry.

The time period specified by Omar is 1984-87. During this time, teams from England, India, New Zealand, West Indies and Sri Lanka toured Australia. Armed with Omar's list, the ACU is flying down to Australia to investigate.

How legitimate these claims are, or even whether they lead to anything substantial, time (and the ACU investigation) will tell. But here are some scattered thoughts that might or might not come into play as the investigation proceeds.

- 23 women are a lot. How did Qasim Omar himself get such detailed information about them? Either way, he will undoubtedly have some tricky questions to answer.

- Qasim Omar, who played 26 Tests with an average of 36.63, was dropped from the Pakistani team after making unsubstantiated claims against his teammates. The Pakistani seems to be a latter-day Rashid Latif. Does he have an axe to grind?

- Over 13 years have elapsed since the time period specified by Omar. I wonder what the statute of limitations on prosecuting prostitution is in Australia. This raises the question: can anything even be done about this? Unless threatened by prosecution, the players can always deny all knowledge of such affairs.

- Asking players to under perform against the current Australian team is unlikely to be very lucrative, considering how strong this team is. In the mid-1980s, however, times were very different. Allan Border had just taken over a team very much in transition, a team that was struggling to win consecutive matches. In those days, it's conceivable that there could have been great 'rewards' for players that threw their wickets away against the Aussies.

For now, however, all we can do is wait and watch. In the meantime, what do you think? Tell us…

Design: Devyani Chandwarkar
Illustration: Dominic Xavier