Martin Devlin: Cricket's match-fixing non-scandal

Another cricket match-fixing scandal? Oh please. What a load of cobblers.

Let's keep our feet firmly on the crease here folks. I for one do not take Al Jazeera's documentary as gospel truth.

Not yet anyway.

And certainly not before all the actual evidence is presented to the ICC's Anti-Corruption Unit (or whoever deals with these things this week) for a thorough and independent examination.

And indeed not at all if all it involves is a dossier of accusations, insinuations and affidavits from a bunch of dodgy-dealing characters with obvious vested personal interests and agendas of their own.

I'm not saying there's no truth in its report, I just need to be convinced that those pointing the fingers and making the claims are in fact telling the truth.

And not some skewed or rewritten version of it suddenly and publicly leaked for immediate maximum immediate scandalous headlines.

What do we actually know:
-The Al-Jazeera doco is based around the secret taped interview of a known match-fixer said to work for Asian mafia interests. So at least he's a credible trustworthy witness then.
- Al-Jazeera won't identify any players until they can "substantiate the money trail". Meaning without which they have no evidence and just a bunch of hearsay.
- And in the 2018 world we live, news doesn't have to be news now it's just got to make the news.

Sad as it is but our obsession with click-bait headlines, bubblegum celebrity stories and everything that might somehow be considered scandalous means lurid two-minute trash dominates even the most conservative of our traditional news media.

Stories don't have to be true, or verified, or corroborated - they just have to be written.

Get it out there, get it online, get feedback, get people commenting, get other people commenting on their commenting...heh presto you've already got a follow-up story to the story that maybe isn't even a story after all.

And whenever it does eventually get finalised and/or rigorously scrutinised no-one's around to care anymore or it's so long ago people have moved on to the next sensational scandal and this one is relegated to being just another Google search enquiry.

Cricket, unfortunately, will forever now be subject to allegations of match/spot/spread bet-fixing.

It's the legacy with which Hansie Cronje left us.

And we all know that every game ever played in the world these days will have 100s if not 1000s of crooks and shysters operating unseen somewhere scamming and wheedling and gambling and cheating and corrupting or at least trying their best to.

But that also doesn't by default mean those same matches are in fact corrupted, of that there is no doubt.

What isn't so definitive is the who/what/how/why and when if any of it can ever be proven.

Until it is, I maintain it's our duty to play a straight bat at all bold declarations of this sort.

Not that I don't necessarily believe Al-Jazeera.

I just have much trouble believing those same people that they believe in.