Loose claims in an al-Jazeera documentary have bundled three separate claims of malpractice into one, with some of the information coming from a self-proclaimed crookThe story goes that when the Australian Cricket Board knocked back Kerry Packer in 1976, Packer told them: “there’s a little bit of the whore in all of us, gentlemen, so name your price”. That line came to mind early on in al-Jazeera’s new documentary, Cricket’s Match-Fixers, when its undercover journalist, David Harrison, meets the alleged match‑fixer, Aneel Munawar, for the first time. Harrison asks Munawar if he ever has problems arranging fixes. “Actually,” Munawar tells him, “if you have the money, you will do anything.” Harrison opens up a suitcase full of cash and says:...
England’s crushing defeat highlighted how red-ball cricket’s marginalisation in this country is damaging the development of Test players – but Pakistan’s victory was a triumphFor the romantic rather than the English patriot, the Lord’s Test provided a wonderful outcome.England were humbled by the pace trio of Mohammad Abbas, Hasan Ali and Mohammad Amir. Abbas is a former leather worker from Sialkot, who has been playing in the most uncharted domestic competition in the world for seven or eight years before an excursion as Leicestershire’s overseas player (maybe not the most glamorous of overseas gigs); Hasan’s parents wanted him to get a proper job as a lawyer so they apparently burned his cricket whites; Amir is the cricketing prodigal son, misled...
Test debutant and Jos Buttler make a stand amid England’s desperate inability to find impetus against brilliant PakistanWhen the game was as good as lost, England at last started to play as if they could win. They were 110 for six, still 69 runs behind, when Dom Bess joined Jos Buttler in the middle. The two of them batted right through the late afternoon, in the sunny lees of a hot summer day. Buttler is a man of peerless talent but the way Bess, a 20-year-old playing his first Test, made it all look so easy showed up just how poor England had been until he came to the crease. They put on 125 and the hours their partnership lasted...
Joe Root’s side have now been dismissed for under 250 in seven of the 14 Test innings they have played since SeptemberSeems new dawns last longer in the Arctic winter than they do in English cricket. At Lord’s their latest broke at around 3.30pm, when Jos Buttler walked out to join Ben Stokes in the middle, then set again 40 minutes later when Stokes was dismissed leg-before and Buttler was caught at second slip. By 4.30pm, England were all out for 184. They had lost six wickets for 35 runs in 63 balls. Sudden and short as it all was, the mayhem lasted long enough to make one thing clear – whatever was wrong with the team’s batting in the...
Four wickets apiece from visitors’ fiery-natured seamers shows their prowess in the field should not be underrated by EnglandBack in 2010, that annus horribilis for Pakistan cricket, Hasan Ali’s parents set alight his whites after becoming frustrated with a sporting obsession that appeared to have taken priority over his studies and their dream of him one day becoming a lawyer.The previous year Hasan and his elder brother had made their own pitch by hand, digging a two-foot deep trench before filling it with concrete and asking a local bricklayer to help smooth it over. Needless to say, this was a young man already set on making it as a professional, just not the kind his mother and father had envisaged....