I had a good couple of emails with a friend today who is a sportswriter, discussing the spot fixing and how hypocritical some of the reaction has been. It doesn't take a genius to work out how cricketers are going to line up politically on the whole, and I suppose the dubious bombast of idiots like Darren Gough and Michael Vaughan is as depressingly predictable as the fact that this has happened to Pakistan.
There has been some balance to some articles I have seen written on the whole situation, but what I can't understand is how people can react with such vitriol to these things? Where is people's empathy? I know that some ex-pros must have more insight than anyone into the whys and wherefores of how these things work, but surely they can see that it is the gluttony and greed that have permeated the game on every level that is the root cause of all this, not some isolated cultural marker in Pakistani culture. The fact is that those players just can't sell their arses to whatever cheap deodorant company comes dangling a cheque in front of them this month. Or peddle their inane dronings daily on the world's most drivel filled radio station. Where was this uproar at Stanford? Or Modi? It's too easy to sit here in a culture of comfort and start passing judgement from some standpoint of sporting integrity. The moral vacuum in all sport is what enables all this, and that should be remembered by everyone who goes out looking for Pakistani scapegoats.
