The spot-fixing problem.

This past week, the Australian sporting news landscape  has seen a fortuitous conglomeration of two wholly separate stories with disturbing similarities. As news filtered through that Bulldogs prop Ryan Tandy had been arrested on charges of providing false evidence to authorities in relation to spot-fixing allegations directed at him, a storm was building on the other side of the world. Pakistan's accused trio of Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir faced an ICC hearing on allegations of spot-fixing in a Cricket Test Match against England, while it is also been announce that the trio will face legal trial in England.

Spot-fixing is a term which is new to most people's vocabulary, if not completely new as a concept. It refers to fixing specific features of a sporting contest, usually something small and inconsequential enough in the game's overall scheme. Because bets can nowadays be made pertaining to almost any fine detail of a sporting match, corrupt individuals can involve participants in the match by promising payouts in return for a single minor action instead of something as obvious and heinous as throwing an entire match. Both of these recent examples are textbook cases of how easy spot-fixing is, and highlight the likelihood there is of far more unnoticed instances of spot-fixing.

Our local small-time spot-fixing scandal came about in September 2010, during a Round 24 match of the National Rugby League between the Canterbury Bulldogs and the North Queensland Cowboys. The preconditions for spot-fixing were rife. It was a late season match between two struggling teams both well out of finals contention, with comparatively little media exposure for an NRL match. Authorities of the NRL and TAB Sportsbet observed an unusual proportion of bets in the "first point scored" category had been placed on a Cowboys penalty goal as the first scoring instance in the match. While not especially unlikely, it was suggested that the amount of bets placed on that particular instance was outside the standard deviation of established betting patterns.

Bulldogs forward Ryan Tandy was accused of complicity when he gave up a cheap possession turnover in the opening minutes, then conceded an equally amateurish penalty in perfect kicking range for the Cowboys. The Cowboys took the surprise option of a quick tap and caught the Bulldogs off guard, scoring a try in the corner as the first points of the match instead.

Barely a month earlier in England came the spot-fixing scandal which gained worldwide attention. During the 4th and final match of a Test series between England and Pakistan at Lords, British newspaper News Of The World released a report alleging that fast bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir had accepted bribes from agent Mazhar Majeed to deliberately bowl no-balls on certain predetermined deliveries. Pakistan's captain Salman Butt was implicated as an intermediary in these deals. The report was the result of a sting operation by News Of The World reporters who secretly filmed Majeed counting out bribe money and stating that Amir and Asif would bowl two no-balls on certain deliveries. In the match both these predicted no-balls eventuated, and both were notably extreme oversteps.

Majeed was arrested by Scotland Yard in response to the video, and the implicated players were stood down indefinitely. Last week the ICC enquiry handed down its verdicts. Salman Butt has been banned for ten years (five suspended), Mohammad Asif for seven years (two suspended) and Mohammad Amirfor five years. The controversy has likely ended the career of two of Pakistan's best, and severely dented the career of 18 year old Amir who had been raved about in many cricketing circles as the world's next great fast bowling prodigy.

Match-fixing is not new to Cricket. A series of betting controversies plunged the game into disorder in the 1990s, centred around Indian bookmakers invariably. Cricket match-fixing made the news in Australia when it was revealed that Mark Waugh and Shane Warne had accepted money from an Indian bookmaker styling himself "John" in return to weather and pitch information a series of times throughout 1994 and 95. The scandal was heightened by the fact that the Australian Cricket Board fined the pair privately and did not release the information until it was uncovered by the media in 1998.

Most infamous of all of course were the revelations of 2000 of wide ranging match-fixing indiscretions on the part of South Africa Hansie Cronje, who was banned from all forms of Cricket for life, leaving his glowing reputation in tatters. Cronje was then killed in a light plane crash in 2002. Conspiracy theories have abounded in recent years that foul play on the part of people involved with corrupt bookmaking played a part in Cronje's death, as well as the mysterious sudden death of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer during the 2007 World Cup. In both cases these are almost certainly conspiracies without wait, but it is a measure of the power and influence Indian and Pakistani bookmakers have over popular discourse. The bizarre flight of Pakistan wicket keeper Zulqarnain Haider in late 2010 is another example of the frightening immediacy of spot fixing. Haider ran from the team hotel in Dubai midway through a series and fled to London, making claims of threats against him and his family if he did not participate in further fixing. These bookmaking powerbrokers may not be capable of murder, but have the spectre and weight enough to make people think they are.

It was thought after the Cronje scandal, and the doors it opened in exposing related instances, that match-fixing had been largely stamped out of Cricket. In reality, the Cronjecreative types of bet. By now the real time nature of the Internet has reduced a pursuit which was once little more than picking who you thought would win a game, down to an almost infinite set of possibilities, where absolutely anything is fair game as betting fodder. On the subcontinent the outcome of every individual delivery of a Cricket match can be wagered on.

Rugby League has been happily free from Cricket's sordid recent history of corruption, but this is of little solace. The fact that a sport traditionally difficult to fix and consequently free of such problems, is now becoming embroiled in the same scandals, is perhaps even more disturbing. The nature of modern gambling has facilitated spot-fixing as a very profitable corrupt venture for those willing to try. Whether or not the Tandy case is a genuine example of spot-fixing is not of particular importance. The allegations have raised the awareness of fixing Rugby League matches as theoretically possible, to potential fixers and to an increasingly distrusting public. Recent rumours are surfacing that a second 2010 match involving the New Zealand Warriors could also have included an instance of spot-fixing.

The problem obviously is that spot-fixing can be done any number of ways and is nearly impossible to detect. Individual cases will come to light from time to time but there is no way of knowing how widespread the practice is. Traditional match-fixing involves rather blatant attempts at influencing the final result of an entire contest, but there is no conceivable limit to how spot-fixing can be covertly achieved.

Two solutions that have been posited in relation to both these scandals, particularly the local Rugby League scandal, have taken hold with certain prominent members of the sporting community. The first is banning players from betting on their own games, or betting outright. This is an important issue with many complex facets to deal with, but its an issue for another day. It is irrelevant to the spot-fixing problem as the players only financial dealings are with the corrupt fixers and bookmakers. The second distinctly local solution is a good old banning of gambling outright in this country. This is a happy notion, albeit pathologically naive. The argument overall is a political one, with views on both sides which smarter men than I understand far beyond my simple sports-centric opinions. Attempting to ban a practice so rampant and indelibly stamped in the economic fabric as it is on subcontinental markets, would do nothing except to cause turmoil and would not be a deterrent to such a powerful section of people. A practice with elements of seedy underground illegality would become consumed by seedy underground illegality exclusively. From an Australian perspective, legal sports betting remains well regulated and is perhaps the healthiest form of gambling in the country, operating with far less reputation for devastation than other forms of gambling. The nature of Internet gambling and its ability to reach anyone also has rendered any notions of nations bans obsolete.

The overriding fact is that spot-fixing is a unique and especially dangerous problem as its nature, as well as the power of those behind it, make it practically impossible to ever police, or to even notice a majority of the time. Pakistan opening batsman Yasir Hameed was quoted as saying 'almost every match' was fixed in some way. You'd like to hope this is not the case, but there's no way of knowing, particularly when Pakistan are involved. There are no perfect solutions and the reason spot-fixing is so frightening is because there appears to be no conceivable way to stop it.

Any delusions to a sporting world free of betting corruption are misplaced, just as gambling will always be a human problem. But steps can be taken to limit its spectre in sport specifically. Quite clearly the first of these must be a halt to the rampant inventing of new betting markets out of thin air. Yes sports betting is a complex science for its devotees, and there needs to be a variety of options and alternatives, but surely the need for a betting market on every single ball of a Cricket match is of little necessity. Spot-fixing is specifically about the small things, exploiting tiny inconsequential betting markets. If these are taken out, those trying to corrupt a sporting contest can to an extent be weeded out as they will have to commit substantially bigger high-stakes fixes. The rest of the work needing to be done is up to the sporting bodies though. Sports have to look after their players financially so they are not so tempted by the lure of bribes. The contexts of the two scandals in question are particularly relevant. the Pakistan Cricket Board is of course a dysfunctional organisation specialising in tumult, and regular disputes with players over their income are part and parcel of the idiocy. The NRL in turn has a notoriously inadequate salary cap. 2010 already showed the devastating impact this has had, with the Melbourne Storm salary cap scandal rocking the league to its core. If the NRL is not careful players could increasingly turn to far more shady income sources than the AFL or Rugby Union.

The final vital key in fighting the problem of corruption is to train those involved in the sport to recognise it. Players, officials, even fans to an extent. Spot-fixing is extremely difficult to pick up on, and we can never expect to notice every instance. But if more money and manpower can be put into educating referees and umpires, as well as perhaps training specialised off field observers to know what they're looking for, in time it may become harder and harder to get away with it. But the most important education is for the players themselves, so that impressionable youths like Mohammad Amir can't fall into the trap of corruption.