They say you can’t possibly know how much money you need, because you will always want more. By fair means or foul. In our society both methods are pretty common. It’s a part of our culture; we accept it. But it still hurts when our beloved ones are the regular practitioners of the foulest ways of making money.
Mohammad Ashraful was our country’s first superhero. About once every ten innings, he would present us with a fabolous innings that toyed with world class bowlers and every kind of field setting. Its true that on the other nine days it was excruciatingly painful to watch him get out cheaply. Still, he was kind of the poster boy of our team. And now he’s the torch bearer of corruption in our cricket. Although the official reports aren’t out yet, the investigations by our news agencies uncovered the murky world of spot fixing, and sometimes even match, most recently during the second installment of the BPL.
What is spot fixing, you may ask. Surely Ashraful doesn’t need to get paid to play bad: he will do it for free (relevant quote: “If you are good at something, never do it for free”). Well, spot fixing is a bit different from match fixing (which is throwing the match). Think of a group of bored people with too much money. They start betting on some random events in a cricket match. For example- Mr Pilu bets that the 16th over of the innings will be bowled by Mohammad Aamir and the second ball will be a no-ball. He bets a thousand dollars. His friend Mr Dilu says, “lol dat wud nvr cum tru,” and bets against him. Five others rather dislike Pilu and puts 1000 bucks each against him. So if Pilu’s predictions come true he will get the 6000 from them in addition to his own 1000. Pilu contacts the captain and the bowler. He promises them a thousand each if the former brings in Aamir in the 16th over and the latter bowls a no-ball. Both of them are cheap, and agrees: because, hey, a thousand bucks and virtually no risk of getting caught. And Pilu still goes home with more money.
Now imagine this with several more zeroes at the right. Salman Butt, Mohammad Aamir, Sreesanth and now Ashraful are the high profile criminals of this case.
While we may very well be blaming it all on his idiocy and greed (which we have every rights to), we have to consider other factors. It starts with BPL, the t-20 invasion on our pitches. It is run by people with very little knowledge about anything except business. What amazes us most is that they aren’t even doing that properly: most of the players playing in the BPL haven’t been paid fully or on time. From the report published on the Daily Star sports section a few days ago, we surmise that the owners of Ashraful’s franchise on the BPl, offered to clear his dues and the others in the team. Ashraful being the person who can offer a pull shot to a yorker (i.e. mentally handicapped), agreed and threw a match and did some tinkering here and there.
Whatever the reason may be, a crime is still a crime. Ashraful betrayed us. We watch most sports for the excitement; mulling over whether the misfielding was legit or not takes a lot of fun away. “How can we love someone if we can’t even trust them?” Nabil said. “I thought Ashraful was the last person who would take bribes. Look at his face, he looks like a simpleton,” says Saeed.
“Ban him for life!”
“He is a disgrace.”
“He didn’t even think about us! We don’t need the likes of him.”
Disbelief. Anger. Disappointment.
Oh Ashraful! Why did you do it? Were you in that much need for money?
Source: The Daily Star
