Who is responsible?

 The ghost of match fixing has returned to haunt world cricket. Three Pakistani cricketers, Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif, Kamran Akmal including Captain Salman Batt allegedly involved in deliberately underperforming in the Lord’s Test that England won by an inning. Cricket fans across the world expressed their extreme disappointment at the scandal. Based on a sting operation conducted by News of the world, the metropolitan police arrested Mazhar Majeed allegedly lured Pak fast bowlers to deliver three blatant no ball by the agreed moment of the game.

What a shame! But this is not the new one. This type of incidence is quite common in South Asian country like Pakistan.

We can’t deny that cricket is a big game of money and in South Asian countries like India and Pakistan, cricket is treated like a religion. Everyone is so passionate about the game. I remember in 1996 World cup when Pakistan was defeated by India in the quarter finals, the Pakistani people went out of control. They came on the street, burnt the jack straws of the cricketers; they were crying seemed like someone passed away, few people committed suicide. It proves the craziness of the people for the game. But sometimes it’s really unfair, because when your team performs well, you treat the players like God. But when the team looses, you burn their jack straws, attack them etc. Once again I would like to give the example of 1996 World Cup. When India won in the quarter finals and qualified to the semis, people worshiped the posters of the cricketers by flower garlands and all that. But in the semis, when Sri Lanka beat India, there were shoes on the posters instead of flowers. Was that fair enough?

Cricket has not been a “gentleman’s” game any more.

Match fixing and all the scandals cause the disgrace of the game. Greed forces the cricketers to do such thing no doubt about that but perhaps more or less we, the cricket crazy public are also responsible this.

Think about it.