A lot has been made of England’s transformation since their beleaguered 2015 World Cup campaign Down Under.
Back then, their 50-over tournament came to a fitting culmination as England scraped a win in a rain-ridden dead rubber against minnows Afghanistan. In effect, their revival started as all good English revivals do – drowning in a beer-swilled haze of good intentions.
One of the delights of sport, and one with such longevity and steeped in such history and tradition as Test cricket, is in watching the peaks and troughs of various teams throughout the years, decades, centuries even.
The dominant West Indian side of the 1980s and early 90s, who soon fell away to the Australian superstars of the early noughties, who in turn succumbed to a resurgent South Africa, bouncing back after years in apartheid wilderness.
“To err is human; to forgive, divine.” These days Alexander Pope’s oft-quoted quip is applied to all manner of situations; its relevance is universal. Martin Luther-King applied the sentiment to the civil rights movement, as did Nelson Mandela, to an extraordinary degree. Forgiveness is central to most, if not all, religious texts too – the Bible and the Quran to name but two. However there are some acts, or crimes, where forgiveness appear that much harder, where the label is worn by the perpetrator indefinitely.
Yesterday the International Cricket Council (ICC) confirmed that sanctions against Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt will expire at midnight on 1 September 2015. The ICC announced that the two cricketers, who were convicted alongside their Pakistani team-mate Mohammad Amir for their roles in spot-fixing during the England vs. Pakistan Lord’s Test in August 2010, would be eligible to return to competitive cricket after ‘fulfilling the specific conditions’ laid down by the independent Anti-Corruption Tribunal in February 2011.
Cricket is unique. It is considered the world’s second most popular sport. Yet, unlike football, some of the biggest countries in the world – the USA, China, and Germany for instance – barely know it even exists. Earlier this summer the FIFA corruption scandal made headlines the world over and it was the US’s Department of Justice who were the instigators of legal action against those involved. In cricket, the actions of the game’s administrators are less obvious, less accountable. It is for this reason that the film, Death of a Gentleman, is so integral to drawing attention to the game’s administration. The film’s producers claim that ‘a lack of independent regulation means cricket is being run in a way that fans become chequebooks and players become pawns.’ The Sports Integrity Initiative, an independent sports law platform created to air key issues in sports integrity and to provide a platform for change, has reviewed the film to highlight the integrity and governance aspects of the sport.
Isabelle Westbury 