Cairns Case Highlights the Dark Side of Cricket

Cricket is often seen as a gentleman’s sport, a game where integrity and honesty are pivotal to the spirit in which the game is played. However, over the past decade or so the dark side of a sport which prides itself on fair play has come to light.

The latest case revolves around former all-rounder Chris Cairns. In his prime, Cairns was one of the best all rounders in the game, playing 62 Test matches and 215 One-Day Internationals. Cairns also enjoyed an illustrious spell in County Cricket with Nottinghamshire.

However, all of that has now been forgotten as the case against him begins. Another former New Zealand cricketer, Lou Vincent, is also involved in the case. Vincent has already admitted that he fixed matches during his playing career and has been banned from all cricket activity.

All of his comes just months after New Zealand reached the World Cup final. At a time when New Zealand should be proud of their current cricket team, they are instead focusing on the fall from grace of their heroes of yesteryear.

Evidence has only just started to be heard, and yet already stories of death threats and players threatening each other with cricket bats are coming out.

This is of course not the first time cricket’s name has been dragged through the mud recently. The 2010 case against the Pakistani trio of Salman Butt, Mohammed Asif and Mohammed Amir first alerted the world to the fact that players were manipulating the outcome of events in games for financial rewards. More recently the IPL has also been linked to match fixing, with the Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals being suspended from the competition.

The Cairns case is likely to continue to reveal dark secrets about the murky world of match fixing. Whether these are proven to be true or not, in many respects the damage has already been done. Although the vast majority of cricket matches are played with no match fixing present, once the seed of doubt has been planted it can be difficult to dig out the weed that grows from it.

Cricket has survived scandals like this before, but in the future it may need to survive them again as further allegations come to light. It can only be hoped that the current generation of players learn from the mistakes of the past to ensure the game continues to be seen as one of integrity and honesty.