Rohit Kapoor
The dice was loaded. It seems it was made such that it would listen to Shakuni’s command. And it would roll to whatever number Shakuni wanted. Shakuni played a key part in inciting the Pandavas to play the game of dice and made them lose their kingdom and everything else to Kauravas. This happened centuries ago. The excitement so awfully convincing, the Man has willy niily relented to strong temptations.
Smoking: Prohibition in public places. Statutory warnings on cigarette packets to scare smokers.
Prevent accidents: Fear appeals on highways for safe driving.
Assault on woman: Make stringent laws to curb the menace.
Corruption: Make tough laws to get rid of this menace. And so on the laws.
And now the proposed Laws to rein in “temptations and excitement” to “fix” the fixing in sports.
Research findings suggest health message of various sorts can be more effective if they are framed in a positive manner. For example how to attain good health rather than in a negative manner e.g. risks from a hazardous product. Please evaluate this in the context of smokers. Despite statutory warnings on cigarette packets and print of scary lung cancer picture, how many smokers have stopped smoking? And I believe, corruption has increased many times and is growing un-abated despite special laws, special courts and even social embarrassment is not proving to be a deterrent. Has the harassment or assault on women come down despite what we experienced recently in the country? So many laws, and recent guide lines by the Apex Court on as how to prevent such incidents. I believe it has hardly yielded any perceptible change.
Evidence of match fixing is found throughout history of mankind. The ancient Olympic Games were almost constantly dealing with allegations of athletes accepting bribes to lose a competition and city-states which often tried to manipulate the outcome with large amounts of money. These activities went on despite the oath each athlete took to protect the integrity of the events and the severe punishment sometimes inflicted on those who were caught. Sports betting is the oldest known form of gambling on the planet. In the early days, it was played only as a simple pastime activity; nowadays it’s a multi-billion dollar business.
Life time ban of well known cricketers in the recent past and their un-ceremonious exit from the world of cricket has not turned out to be a deterrent for others.
Governments often make laws to prohibit new kinds of Offences, when ingenious forms of anti-social activity are invented; it is perfectly possible to devise legitimate ways of banning them. Most modern financial crimes that includes Sports Fixing, has to be countered by appropriately designed legislation. Despite best of skills and commitment possessed by a cricketer, game of cricket is known a game of chance and rightly so owing to many inherent factors.
It may not be out of place to explain this by quoting Murphy’s Law, an adage “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”. Things that go wrong in the game of cricket generally are not a deliberate act. Now, Law or no Law, each overstepping by mistake, a catch missed or a missed opportunity to strike the ball is likely to be looked with suspicion. That is extremely unfair to all those genuine cricketers/sportsperson that outnumber the dishonest few. How the Law can restrain the doubt in the mind of a passionate cricket fan when “a catch is missed”? This suspicion is going to stay as for now. What has happened is extremely sad for the game, cricketers and their admirers. Criminal culpability of sport persons? It’s sad.
What they needed? Money, luxury, fame, glamour and they had it all, fast and plentiful. Yet temptation & excitement so strong, the stupidity prevailed over wisdom and budding careers terminated with tarnished image and lifelong social stigma. No lessons learnt from the past. And it reminds me of:
“What win I, if I gain the thing I seek? A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to get a toy? For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?”
William Shakespeare
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