TRAGEDY OR VILLAINY

There was a surprising variance yesterday in reactions to Sunday's news of alleged betting fixes by Pakistan Test cricketers. England's captain Andrew Strauss called for life bans on any players found guilty of match fixing. In fact, these new allegations concern what is called “spot-fixing” -- betting on short passages of play -- rather than the outcome of a whole game. It is not clear whether Strauss intended to make a distinction between the two; it could be argued, of course, that one only too easily leads to the other. Media comment yesterday outside the sports pages was surprisingly restrained with calls for special consideration to be given to the younger members of the Pakistan team -- the brilliant 18-year-old bowler Mohammad Amir was obviously in the mind of one leader writer who said his case would be one of tragedy not villainy for which older members of the side and its management should take some responsibility.

In recent years there has been plenty of evidence that ball-tampering, sledging, time-wasting and pointless challenging of umpires' decisions have undermined any idea that cricket is a game for gentlemen. However, there is a wide gap between such practices and the kind of thing unearthed by the News of the World. The trouble, however, is that such spot-fixes are very difficult to detect without a much greater investment in surveillance of the sport.