Low pay forces players to resort to fixing: http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shoaib-Akhtar-c90080 – Cricket News Update
Shedding light on issues regarding corruption in the sport of cricket, former Pakistani pacer Shoaib Akhtar has stated that players resort to match-fixing owing to the fact that they are underpaid by their boards.
“Fixing happens in our culture because there's less money, there are even lesser opportunities. Cricketers victimised by their boards return (to the team) to mint money,” Akhtar said while speaking to the
Headlines Today news channel.
While the former player has never been implicated in any match-fixing scandals himself (although he did attract plenty of controversy owing to allegations of drug abuse and ball-tampering), he attempted to lay bare the reasons behind corruption in the sport.
“Your friends ditch you, board doesn't back you. They all run you down,” he said. “So when you return you think 'let me teach them a lesson'. Some are corrupt, but some cricketers are turned into criminals by the system.
“We (in Pakistan) don't have much money in cricket ... I was an elite star, still after playing for 14 years I only made seven-eight crore rupees ($1.35-1.54 million),” he added. “I handled it, others go astray.”
The issue of corruption in cricket reared its head with the http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Wessel-Johannes-Cronje-c96502 scandal in 2000, when the former South African captain, now deceased, confessed to having accepted money in exchange for throwing matches. In addition to implicating a handful of other
South African players, the scandal dragged various cricketers from around the world down, among them http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Saleem-Malik-c88105.
The shocking controversy brought to light the world of illegal betting, bookmakers and the underworld, and since then several fixing scandals have come to light, with various newspapers and television channels carrying out sting operations in order to unearth
illegal activity.
The second most devastating fixing scandal to rock the cricketing world occurred in 2010, when three Pakistani players – then skipper http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mohammad-Amir-c76675 – were revealed to have accepted money in order to collaborate with shady
sports agent http://www.senore.com/Cricket/England-c56013 at Lord’s.
All three players were suspended, and went on to serve jail terms. Since then, various other Pakistani players, such as http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Kamran-Akmal-c70122, have also come under scrutiny for suspect activity.
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