Spot fixing: What does cheating a nation lead to?

What does cheating a nation lead to? If it’s India and cricket, it’s a life ban or less and then a place in the public eye or even Parliament. Fixing is back in the news, largely thanks to a Pakistan skipper, but with generous help (pun intended) from a bookie and the Crown Prosecution that managed to get the job done before the cobwebs of time made us forget or even become ignorant to the cause. But as news of the verdict spread, a question started doing the rounds: Jail for no-balls and a ban for match-fixing. Is it fair? Is it like this by design? Did the BCCI’s disciplinary committee convince everyone else that justice had been done with regards to the match-fixers? The bans in question were the punishments handed down to Mohammad Azharuddin (life ban), Ajay Sharma (life ban), Manoj Prabhakar (five years) and Ajay Jadeja (five years which was later overturned). Because, as The Telegraph pointed out on its front page, even though 4225 days (11 years and counting) have passed since the Delhi police made public the tapped conversation between Hansie Cronje and an alleged bookie of Indian origin, a chargesheet is yet to be filed in the case. [caption id=“attachment_123822” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Photographers take pictures through the window of a prison van as it leaves Southwark Crown court in London. Reuters”]  [/caption] The London cops, in comparison, needed just 159 days to complete investigations. And another 270 days later, the UK court also delivered the first convictions. “We are still trying to extradite Sanjeev Chawla who is hiding in the UK. He is the main accused in the case that became one of the biggest scandals in cricketing history,” said an IPS officer who headed the probe in the match-fixing probe to The Telegraph. The officer went on to add: “After the conviction of the Pakistani cricketers, we are now planning to appeal to the court to announce Chawla as a proclaimed offender.” Did it take the police 11 years to come to this conclusion or was there simply a lack of political will or perhaps they just jumped the gun? If the Delhi police did not believe they had enough evidence to nail the accused in the court of law, then why did they go public? Keep it under wraps; get more information and then and only then go public. That’s what logic would dictate. Either way: Azharuddin is now a sitting MP, Ajay Jadeja managed to get his ban overturned and even played the Ranji Trophy before acting in movies and becoming a cricket expert and Manoj Prabhakar is coach of Delhi. They are all back in the mix – in one way or the other. KK Paul, then the Delhi police commissioner, told The Telegraph: “Initially, people had criticised an issue out of nothing. But now with the conviction of the two Pakistani cricketers, people realised that we were on the right trail.” But at least in this case, it seemed like a trail that led to a dead end. How and why does something as shocking as the match-fixing scandal get pushed under files for so long that it fades from public memory. Cheating thrives on the trust of others. Con artists first create the impression of trustworthiness, placing their targets at ease before going in for the kill. The cricketers did it and got caught. Next up, we expect the police to at least have enough evidence to back up their case. But after being conned by the players, we were also conned by the police. The case went nowhere. Most of us weren’t surprised by that – why should we be? We’ve seen it happen in so many cases over the years that we’ve lost count. By now the trail has surely gone cold. And we still wait because when it concerns the Indian justice system, it seems there is little else that we can do.