Cricket Update: President Musharaf calls for leniency with Mohammad Amir
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 Cricket stood on the brink of disaster last month following the spot fixing controversy that left much hue and cry in the international media where a few even called for a ban on the Pakistan cricket team. However, it must be understood that this
is not the first time a sport has been under the microscope for fixing allegations. With betting legal in many countries, it is hardly any surprise that many sportsmen fall prey to the bookmakers who offer easy money and bucket loads of it.
Practices such as ‘tanking’ have been used in many sports, where instead of asking the team blatantly to underperform substitutions of players are made who are not likely to play well in a particular position. This could happen in American football, rugby,
hockey or any other game for that matter. Many a times, certain teams have been alleged of using this particular practice to forge the result of a particular game often using phantom injuries as a reason for doing that.
Match fixing is not uncommon or unheard for, when it comes to the referees and umpires. Generally, they get to escape the clutches of the law since there seems to be little check on the match referees or umpires. Since 2004, scandals have been witnessed
in prominent sports leagues in Portugal, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Germany-c2904 (Bundesliga scandal), Brazil (Brazilian football match-fixing scandal) and the United States (Tim Donaghy), all of which were concerned with referees who fixed matches for gamblers.
The ancient Olympics since the inception of the sports event had faced charges of match fixing with history books replete with such examples. With so much so as the World Series of the 1919 being fixed, with eight players of Chicago White Sox throwing the
game. In the face of an imminent threat faced by sports today it is absolutely imperative that a system must be there to brief and train young sportsmen on the dangers of this practice, particularly so with players from poor countries who live in impoverished
conditions. The temptation might be just too great for these players to fix the matches. As such generalizations cannot be made, since it is not only the poor who fix matches but rather players from the rich Board of Control for Cricket in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750, like Mohammad
Azharuddin and Hansie Cronje who hailed from http://www.senore.com/Cricket/South-Africa-c757 fixing matches.
When it comes to players, as young as 18, banning them is not the answer or the solution. Emphasis should be on rehabilitation of the young players, so that they have a chance to redeem themselves. With the current match fixing imbroglio that has enveloped
Pakistan cricket, it is important that players like Mohammad Amir be given a chance at rehabilitation. Senior cricketer Nasser Hussain and Michael Holding agree with people being given second chances.
“But as Michael Holding and I said on Sunday, you do generally have to give people a second chance in life. That's my opinion,” http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Nasser-Hussain-c78777 wrote on sky sports.
Now President Pervez Musharaf has come out of the closet to issue a statement in favour of Mohammad Amir, who he feels must be treated leniently given his age. In a statement made to reporters and the media the former President of Pakistan said,
"This boy, I would say, is hardly a man at 18, who came under the influence of senior players, needs to be seen compassionately for the sake of his family and for the sake of cricket at large. It's a very sad incident,"
Musharraf told reporters.
He has raised a very important argument of rehabilitation of players as young as Amir, who have a higher tendency of getting influenced by senior players especially with the captain of the team being involved as well.
"Instead of destroying a person, rehabilitation of the person is required. We need to do everything to rehabilitate him and set an example for others," the former president went on to say.
Tags: