AFTER the revelations concerning the game of cricket involving spot betting and match fixing. I was astonished to see in the Northern Echo an interview with an agent for our leading cricketers that appeared to be sponsored or promoted by Sporting Bet (their advert appeared at the bottom of the article).

Cricket is the game of the great unpredictability and I have followed it for years not once suspecting that anything was not as it seemed.

However that has all changed and now I find myself querying everything.

Initially, we were informed that the series had been fixed and Pakistan were to lose the series.

Then three Pakistan players were removed from their team on evidence from a Sunday newspaper. Any team losing coincidentally their captain and two leading bowlers would be severely weakened.

Secondly to maximise interest to the bookmakers it was crucial that the series was level 2-2 before the final game. Guess what?

Looking back some crucial decisions helped, notably the England player given not out and then going in to complete a match – winning innings. The commentator at the time said: “That’s unbelievable, anyone could see that was out.”

And then looking back over the county season there were some surprising results and I can think of a couple of occasions when a team made an extremely low score and then went on to win the match.

And at the time of writing, no Pakistani player is to face police action.

The only player facing police action is playing in county cricket.

Interesting?

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