By DON CAMERON
International cricket survived bodyline, and took only a few years to turn Kerry Packer from enemy to ally - helped not a little by the transfer of Australian television rights to Packer's Channel 9.
But the cricket world will face all manner of difficult problems before regaining some balance after the Hansie Cronje affair lifted the stone and revealed the match-fixing and player manipulation that squirmed evilly below.
Bodyline and the Packer revolt were, in contrast, brief glitches within the international boundaries of the game. The problems were solved basically by cricketers negotiating with cricketers.
Now cricket faces a greater peril. The game has now become the plaything of the eastern underworld, of the illegal bookmakers and money-launderers and tax-dodgers of India.
The International Cricket Council cannot act against those using the game as the basis of an evil and illegal multi-million-dollar industry. The ICC cannot touch those people, the powers behind a foul-smelling empire that can have close to $500 million as the jackpot for the recent India-South Africa one-day series - the time when the apparently squeaky-clean Cronje threw such a sordid shadow over his own career, his team and the game.
Cronje was dealing in peanuts. A tight India-Pakistan series can bring in individual bets approaching $10 million.
The ICC can only hope that the Indian police and anti-corruption squads can identify and isolate the ringleaders of this vast empire, for cricket does not have the power to fight crime.
Fortunately, the chairman of the ICC, Dagmohan Dalmiya, is an Indian, of considerable personal fortune, and will already be conscious that the good name of his country as well as his sport is under such serious threat.
The ICC will start its crisis meetings early next month. One reason for the habitual avoidance of instant action is that India must first assemble more close-to-the-action evidence before heading for London. In the meantime, a judge will be appointed to lead an inquiry in South Africa.
Even so, the ICC must act urgently, and with strength - two virtues that may have been clouded in recent years. A recent New Zealand radio "news" broadcast gave a biased hint on how the ICC was regarded as a powerful law-enforcing body.
The senior disc-jockey dismissed the ICC as "people lining their own pockets and flying first-class" while the sidekick indulged in a brief but nasty assault on the character of Colin Cowdrey, one of New Zealand cricket's strongest international allies for the last 20 years.
The ICC is a healthier band than that summary dismissal would indicate, but it is not yet equipped for hard-nosed counterattack against such powerful and hostile forces menacing the game.
Only in the past three or four years has the ICC, with a permanent secretariat in London, fashioned a quick-action (by ICC standards) band of chief executives from the major cricketing powers.
From the London meeting the ICC must show strong leadership. Cronje and anyone else found guilty of tampering with individual scores or the conduct of matches must be banned from the game under control of the ICC or its members.
The ICC must give the players, and not only those at international level, the old-fashioned (and perhaps amateur) message. Cricket, or any game, is a waste of time if it does offer dignity, credibility and commonsense conduct within the laws of the game, decent society and the land.
It has already made some progress in this direction with the growing impact of international referees and a strict code of conduct. The game, at least at international level, does already have punitive sheriffs, as well as the traditional umpires.
But there is a longer, harder trail ahead for the ICC. It must toss aside its traditional, conservative and leisurely conduct of world affairs, a state of mind based on the old-fashioned premise that cricket was a decent game played and administered by decent people.
It must now get on the front foot. Dalmiya must provide the leadership, and the liaison with the Indian law-enforcement people. Perhaps he might even try to persuade the Indian Government to legalise betting on cricket, and thus take the money-making means away from the criminals (or at least from those who can be caught).
The millions of people who still want cricket heroes will have to wait to see whether the ICC can restore the credibility (one hesitates to use the word charm) that has long been a foundation-stone of the game - a game that belongs to people who love it for its distinctive style and character, and does not belong to the gangsters who would hijack it.
Cricket: These gangsters hijacking cricket must be stopped
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