ICC

Evening Standard

"One of the benefits (of the spot-fixing cases) is that there is a real desire among the players to stamp it out," says David Collier. Image courtesy of Evening Standard

When David Collier moved in to Lord’s in 2004, Australia were ruling cricket while England were among the chasing pack.

Now the roles are reversed, with Andrew Strauss’s men looking to cement their place at the top of the rankings during the three-Test series against Pakistan which began in Dubai today.

Australia claimed a series victory over India on Sunday, a result the Baggy Greens could not have envisaged a month ago when their first home Test defeat to New Zealand in more than a quarter of a century sparked headlines such as ‘Aussie cricket crisis’ and ‘Lowest of the low’.

Read more >

Outlook – Opinion

A wealthy Board, wealthy players, but a poverty of strategy and ambition—and a ‘cool’ captain who’s clueless

Indian cricket is in the classic position of the rich man who finds that money does not bring success, let alone happiness. To anyone brought up on Bollywood films, that is hardly a surprising script, but it’s the grim reality that stares Indian cricket in the face. What makes it worse is its predictability. The easy thing would be to fault the IPL. It is more than that. The sad situation is the result of years of mismanagement and any lack of strategic thinking. This is a problem that goes beyond cricket to what may be called the national psyche.

I was made aware of this back in 2002. India had just won a Test in Trinidad—the first Test they had won in the West Indies since that epic victory, also at Trinidad, back in 1976. After the victory, captain Sourav Ganguly kissed the turf of the Queen’s Park Oval; I felt it epitomised the new India. Yet the next Test in Barbados saw Ganguly run out Rahul Dravid and an abysmal batting collapse. Far from looking like victors, Indians looked a deflated team waiting to go home. A perceptive critic defined it as the poverty of ambition. India had won one Test in the Caribbean; what more was required? Indian cricket has always suffered from this syndrome.

Read more >

Times Now

Can Kambli’s hint about possible match-fixing be taken at face value?

Former cricketer Vinod Kambli raised suspicion on the 1996 World Cup semi-final between India and Sri Lanka and said he found “something amiss” in the game, a claim which came in for sharp criticism from Sourav ganguly. Kambli, who scored 1084 runs in 17 Tests and 2477 runs in 104 ODIs for India, said he was suspicious of then captain Mohammed Azharuddin’s decision to field first in the semi-final which was eventually awarded to Sri Lanka because of crowd problem. However, Ganguly said just because India batted second in the match doesn’t mean that it was fixed and Kambli should back up his claims with solid proof.

TIMES NOW’s Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami debates the issue with Atul Wasan, Former Indian Cricketer; Boria Majumdar, Cricket Historian; Kishore Bimani, Cricket Journalist; Sharda Ugra, Senior Editor CricInfo.com; Anirudh Bahal, Senior Journalist and Mihir Bose, Former Sports Editor, BBC and Author.

Debate: Fact or Fiction? – part 1

Debate: Fact or Fiction? – part 2

Debate: Fact or Fiction? – part 3

Insideworldfootball.biz

Britain and Europe have never been easy bedfellows and the turmoil of the eurozone may lead to a further, even permanent, alienation. Yet, ironically, in sport Britain is not on the periphery of Europe, but leading the way.

Nothing illustrates this better than the vote on Tuesday (November 15) in the European Parliament about match fixing. This, as UEFA President Michel Platini keeps repeating, is, “the biggest threat facing the future of sport in Europe”.

The MEPs called for measures to protect the integrity of sport through cross-border cooperation between sports organisations and relevant public bodies. But, more significantly, they specifically recommended penalising betting fraud as a criminal offence throughout Europe. And in this Europe is six years behind Britain.

Read more >

Evening Standard

Man of power: Lord Condon, outside the Houses of Parliament, spent a decade with the ICC. Image courtesy of Evening Standard.

There can have been few observers of cricket’s spot-fixing trial who have a better knowledge of the threat the issue poses to the game than Lord Condon.

After all, in 2000 he set up the ­International Cricket Council’s anti-corruption unit, which he chaired for a decade.

We meet in the wake of the convictions of the three Pakistan cricketers, Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, who conspired to bowl deliberate no-balls during the Fourth Test with England last year.

Read more >