IN this era of conspiracy theories, it's surprising no-one has suggested Wimbledon is fixed to allow Tim Henman to win. How else can we explain Sampras, Agassi and Safin, three of the top six seeds, departing in the second round?

It is not a theory likely to carry much credence, however, as there are no bookmakers standing to make huge profits - well not such huge profits as those selling strawberries or the 20,000 slices of pizza apparently consumed at the championships. Nor are there any corrupt officials aiming to push the claims of developing nations and thereby strengthen their own position.

This cannot be said of football and cricket, and it is a further measure of Germany's good fortune in reaching the World Cup final that they met South Korea at a time when the conspiracy theory needed to be nipped in the bud.

It had reached a climax with Spain's disallowed goal in the quarter-final, which was so ludicrous as to render the Spaniards even more worthy of sympathy than Italy, who also had a good goal disallowed and a man wrongly sent off against the joint hosts.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter, against whom allegations of corruption abound, has condemned the standard of refereeing. Yet he knows he must stay on-side with the developing countries if he is to retain his fragile hold on the top job, which is decided on a one country, one vote basis.

The problems in Spain's quarter-final surrounded an Egyptian referee and a Trinidadian linesman, and other countries represented include Benin and Vanuatu, while Spain and Italy have no assistant referee at the finals.

IT'S a similar story in cricket, where the game's power bloc now revolves around India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, who engineered Test status for Bangladesh.

Huge television revenues are generated in that part of the world, as well as the big bucks creamed off by dodgy bookmakers.

There is little doubt this still goes on as Lord Condon's anti-corruption unit is powerless to act on its findings. In March they announced that a former Test player and Test umpire were about to be named and shamed, but this is up to the ICC's executive board, on which the Asian bloc has a two-thirds majority.

So while Hansie Cronje went to his grave a sadly tainted man, others will get away with it because the power-brokers don't want to rock any more boats.

I'M thinking of becoming a sports psychologist. Apparently they can earn £400 a day just for convincing tennis players like Jane O'Donoghue that they are capable of beating Venus Williams. The Wigan girl, of course, lost 6-1, 6-1 to the world No 1, whose career earnings are approaching £7m, compared with her opponent's £8,500.

Yet O'Donoghue apparently thinks her psychologist, Gloria Budd, is worth every penny of her £400 a day fee.

"She has taught me how to dress, pluck my eyebrows, feel good about myself, about confidence, about focus. Now I would never wear anything that wasn't stylish, that showed off my legs. Things like that have paid off for Anna Kournikova."

Maybe so, Jane, but do you really want to beat Venus Williams or become a catwalk queen who loses her cool when her commitment to the game is questioned?

VILLAGE cricket used to be a helmet-free zone in which fielders who retrieved the ball from cow claps were forbidden from making the sandwiches. Otherwise there were no rules and no rows - just perfect harmony.

Watching the final hour at Aldbrough-St-John last Saturday, I was amused to see batsmen wearing helmets to face a bowler known elsewhere in these pages as the Demon Donkey Dropper.

Less amusing was the tale which reached my ears about an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation which took place at Moorsholm on the North York Moors.

A Loftus batsman was apparently angered by the fielder at short third man becoming involved in a conversation with spectators about a mole which had been spotted on the boundary.

A heated exchange followed, then the batsman edged the next ball straight into the hands of his adversary. It's usually called come-uppance, but such phrases never used to appear in the village cricket lexicon.

DAVID Seaman's book, In Safe Hands, is now being sold off at £2.99. It's probably not quite such a literary masterpiece as Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, from which came the phrase "the horror, the horror," made famous by Marlon Brando in the film Apocalypse Now.

But I was reminded of those words first by Seaman's gaffe - that Brazilian goal was no freak - then by Germany reaching the final. Hammer could make a real spine-chiller of this double horror - it would surely be a bigger earner than Seaman's book.

Published: 28/06/2002