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Not Kargil, Not Rioting: Just A Game

I've begun asking myself these questions as the soap opera continues every day, apparently without an end in sight and apparently without an end to the mystifying angles to it all. Bindra accuses Dalmiya; Prabhakar accuses Kapil Dev; Kapil weeps on TV; Rungta calls Bindra names; Kapil sneers at Prabhakar's cricketing skills and tells us he (Kapil) is a patriot; magazines tell us that names like Azharuddin, Jadeja, Mongia, Prasad and yes, Kapil, have all cropped up in conversations with bookies; cricket enthusiasts file public interest cases; Kapil says anyone found fixing a match should be hanged; Prabhakar screens an "astonishing" film; on and on it goes.

And it all makes front-page news. And in the midst of it all, a team gets selected for a tournament in Dhaka: as if nothing is going on, as if the players can be presumed to put the whole mess out of their minds and play ball.

Then there's the cherry on top: Vinod Kambli's omission from that team is occasion for every red-blooded Bombayite to feel personally emasculated. A Marathi poster that appears on the streets says: "Dear Vinod Kambli, pardon us, we Mumbaikars are eunuchs." Now I'm a great fan of Kambli's flair and technique and I believe he should have been in that team. But "eunuchs"? Is this a game or must even team selection be a test of national virility?

I'll return to that. Actually, it was that poster that finally broke the bubble for me. Why are we taking all this so seriously, I wondered. And when I asked that, the questions I began this column with presented themselves too. What is the offence here? Why is the CBI involved?

Let's start with the root of all the trouble: betting on cricket matches. After all, betting means money, and ever-larger sums of money at that. Since it is, it is only a matter of time before some of that money spills over into efforts to sway matches; and that can only be done by offering that money to players. That is, betting means match-fixing.

As I understand it, betting is the only thing in the whole rigmarole that is illegal (apart from shady TV rights negotiations, which I'm not even getting into). That is, if I bet on a cricket match, I and the bookie I place the bet with are doing something illegal. As the laws stand, both of us can be prosecuted. And this makes no sense to me. I can place a bet on a horse race and that's completely legal. In fact, there are even special tax measures spelled out in your tax return forms, to deal with gains and losses at the racetrack. Why then is betting on cricket illegal? What is special about this game that makes betting on it worthy of penal action?

I don't mean to imply that legalising betting on cricket will put an end to match-fixing. My question is just this: why is betting illegal at all?

And yet, the CBI isn't particularly concerned with this illegality; that is, that doughty agency does not seem to be investigating betting. Instead, it is investigating the charges of match-fixing: what Kapil said or didn't; what Prabhakar yelled back which Prashant Vaidya may or may not have heard. And this makes no sense to me either. When you come right down to it, it is Kapil's word against Prabhakar's. In the absence of evidence, and I cannot see what kind of evidence there is going to be about a claimed conversation in a Colombo hotel room six years ago, what can you prove?

But more important, why the effort by the CBI to prove anything?

This is actually the central point. Let's say the CBI finds some conclusive proof that Kapil Dev did offer Prabhakar that money. What is Kapil then going to be charged with? Sure, all of us would agree that it is a sleazy thing to do, unethical and contrary to the spirit of the game. Sure, it would be a betrayal of all the emotion and hope we invest in the game. Sure, he will be disgraced and his sponsors will desert him. But what is his actual violation of the law? Is it a crime for one cricketer to offer a cricketer money to play badly? For anyone to offer money to a cricketer to play badly? (I don't know that it is or is not, I am only asking what law it violates). Is match-fixing itself a crime? Or is it a crime only by virtue of aiding and abetting betting (whose illegality seems foolish to me anyway)?

Besides, people are offering money to other people on the quiet all the time, to do one favour or another. Whether for getting a railway ticket or a seat in a university, whether for a water connections or a telephone line, we Indians expect bribes and expect to pay bribes. The other day I heard about a police officer who claims to have paid Rs 4 million for his current position. That's 1.5 million more than Kapil is supposed to have offered Prabhakar in Colombo. Yet while paying for plum postings is an open not-even-a-secret, I don't see the CBI investigating it, punishing anyone.

As an aside, our tolerance of such widespread corruption makes me want to laugh at the self-righteous pronouncements that no Indian cricketer is involved in match-fixing. As also the claims of patriotism as a defence against such charges. If every other aspect of Indian life is riddled with sleaze, why should cricket be clean? If so many self-proclaimed patriots turn out to be just more corrupt Indians, why is a mere claim of patriotism a defence?

Besides, give this business of match-fixing a little thought. We flocked to see matches with South Africa earlier this year, the ones we now suspect Hansie Cronje was paid to fix. Nobody knew at the time that they were fixed. We enjoyed them hugely, Cronje's peculiar tactics and all. Now that we know some matches will be fixed, does anyone believe there will be smaller crowds, or that they would enjoy themselves any less, at those matches? After all, just days after Cronje was exposed and the Bindra/Kapil/Prabhakar/Dalmiya soap opera got going, a huge audience turned up at a meaningless benefit match in Delhi, one in which both Kapil and Prabhakar (who got two wickets) appeared. The crowd certainly seemed to love the show. After all too, even with more important matches, we would still not know which ones were fixed, peculiar tactics or not. We would still applaud every huge sixer, every thrilling runout.

The truth is, we simply love cricket. So why the fuss about match-fixing?

Stupid question, of course. We fuss because we drench cricket with all our hopes and aspirations. We see in it a metaphor for our troubled relationship with Pakistan, for our aspirations to be a respected world power, for the excellence that seems to pass us by in many other spheres. Fixing matches betrays all that.

Yet the truth also is, cricket is really just entertainment. Maybe it is time to treat it like that.

Look at the WWF, and I don't mean the World Wide Fund for Nature. Fifteen seconds of the stuff and you know without a shadow of a doubt that it is as fake as a Rs 3 note. Yet wrestling draws massive, passionate, adoring crowds; its TV ratings are consistently bulging. People just lap up these guys in undies clowning around a ring, snarling at each other and pretend-fighting. In fact, I'm willing to bet -- legally, I trust -- that a substantial section of the WWF's audience watches precisely because it is so hokey. There is a fascination in watching the elaborate choreography even an obvious charade needs.

Like a Hindi film, wrestling is escapist entertainment at its best. You go see it, you have a good time, you get back to your life and forget all about it. You do not, never ever, imagine that it has some relationship to reality.

Why treat cricket any differently? Seems to me the healthiest way by far to view the game is as a game, as a show like any other. Then it doesn't matter if matches are fixed. Then we won't burden the game with an entire nation's well-being. Then we might push the CBI to investigate the other, far more important, cases it dawdles over for years.

Then, too, we may not see a talented cricketer's omission from a team, however unjust, as a collective loss of manhood.

Dilip D'Souza