Nicholas Clarke

In the wake of the spot-fix­ing scan­dal af­fect­ing Pak­istan crick­et, lo­cal of­fi­cials have re­ject­ed the idea that West In­dies might ever face a sim­i­lar predica­ment. Dur­ing the Lord's Test match be­tween Pak­istan and Eng­land last month, bowlers Mo­hammed Asif and Mo­hammed Amir were al­leged­ly bribed to bowl de­lib­er­ate no balls at spe­cif­ic points in the match. The crime fell un­der the cat­e­go­ry of spot-fix­ing, where mi­nor in­ci­dents can be pre­med­i­tat­ed rather than the en­tire re­sult. One West In­di­an play­er, Mar­lon Samuels, has ever been found guilty as­so­ci­at­ing with a book­ie. In May 2008, the ICC banned the bats­man for two years for giv­ing out team in­for­ma­tion dur­ing West In­dies' tour of In­dia in Jan­u­ary 2007.

For­mer West In­dies off­spin­ner Ran­ji Nanan, the team's li­ai­son of­fi­cer when it is in T&T, said that the West In­dies play­ers had a clean record apart from the Samuels' in­ci­dent. "I've spent a lot of time with the team and I know for a fact that it has nev­er hap­pened," he said. "I have nev­er sus­pect­ed any of our play­ers and I feel safe they will not fall in­to that trap." Nanan al­so point­ed out that fu­ture trans­gres­sions were un­like­ly to hap­pen since the play­ers had learnt their les­son af­ter see­ing what hap­pened to Samuels. He added that sev­er­al play­ers from around the world had ad­mit­ted to be­ing ap­proached since the scan­dal broke, though no West In­di­ans had come for­ward. T&T team man­ag­er Col­in Bor­de said that the West In­dies re­cent run of bad form was the re­sult of a "lack of con­sis­ten­cy" rather than any out­side in­flu­ences.

"I've not seen any signs of match or spot-fix­ing and I don't think the play­ers are part of that at all," he said. De­spite his con­fi­dence, Bor­de felt it was im­por­tant for ad­min­is­tra­tors to do all that they could in or­der to pre­vent such in­ci­dents from hap­pen­ing. "The pos­si­bil­i­ties ex­ist so we must do every­thing to keep West In­dies as clean as pos­si­ble. We must be very vig­i­lant and keep our eyes and ears to the ground," he said. "It's im­por­tant to ed­u­cate young play­ers about what is ac­cept­able and what is not." Bor­de said he had lit­tle sym­pa­thy for those found guilty and that pun­ish­ment need­ed to be swift. "If the per­pe­tra­tors are found guilty, it should not be tol­er­at­ed. Greed is not ac­cept­able and if they turn their backs on the val­ues that sport stands for then we should turn our backs on them."