LONDON - Despite the retrospective gloss applied by cricketing romantics, the game's origins are firmly rooted in gambling.
Revelations that South African captain Hansie Cronje had accepted money from a bookmaker would not have raised a languid eyebrow among the aristocrats who hijacked the game in the 18th century.
And they would
have been frankly mystified by Lord Hawke's famous pronouncement about cricket: "You do well to love it, for it is more free of anything sordid, anything dishonourable, than any game in the world."
The gentry had time on their hands and money to lavish on a game devised to fill the long rural twilights.
Edwin Stead was one early gamester. Inheriting an estate at the age of 18, he was to live only another nine years as he cheerfully squandered his legacy.
Fifty guineas was at stake for a match between Stead's men and the Duke of Richmond's team. Three years later the sum had doubled for a match between the Duke and Sir William Gage.
In 1833 there were reports of a match for a prize of sterling 1000 ($3000), a huge sum at the time.
Young bloods from the public schools flocked to the matches and bet large sums on the outcome.
With money came corruption.
William Fennex, credited with devising the forward defensive stroke, wrote: "Matches were brought and matches were sold and gentlemen who meant honestly lost large sums of money."
Another William, Lambert of Nottinghamshire, one of the better players of the day, was implicated in match-fixing and banned for life from the game's new headquarters at Lord's.
At his level in the pre-Victorian era, cricket was a pleasant diversion with no moral pretensions.
With its appropriation by the public schools came respectability and with W.G. Grace, the game's first giant, came widespread popularity.
"There is no game in the world more sporting than cricket," opined The Boy's Book of Sport.
"The word itself is used in everyday conversation to express the idea of fair play. 'It's not cricket,' we say, when we want to object to something that is unfair."
As in England nearly 200 years ago, money and betting seem to blame.
The Reverend James Pycroft, cricket's first historian, would not have been surprised.
He wrote: "The constant habit of betting will take the honesty out of any man."
- REUTERS
Full transcript of the "Cronje" tape.
