Credibility of the sport under serious threat

Barely a few days back, this newspaper ran a screaming headline: Cricket's darkest 24 hours.

A double spread, dedicated to then what was being perceived as Bob Woolmer's death due to excessive stress and the England team's dalliance with their well known weakness for alcohol was the subject matter.

Well, we spoke too soon.

It's going to be a week today since the game has "claimed" its first high profile casualty - resurrecting the ghost of match-fixing which has haunted the game too frequently over the last decade.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has no option but to carry on with the showpiece event, but there is no denying the fact that Woolmer's murder has given the game its worst advertisement yet.

It pales into insignificance things like India's certain exit form the Cup or permutations on who's taking on whom in the Super Eight stage of the competition.

Public memory, however, is short. There is still lot of cricket to be played and by the time the winning captain holds the trophy aloft on April 28 night, some of the painful memories may have been eased.

We thought the game had seen its darkest hour when the match-fixing saga in the sub-continent broke in 1999.

The "clean-up" operations began and in the process, some of the finest performers of India and Pakistan were nailed.

Just as one thought it was a bad dream, came the Hansie Cronje shocker. The South African captain blew the lid on yet another can of worms, lived a remorseful life in exile till he died in an aircraft crash - leaving several questions unanswered.

And then on the eve of this World Cup, came the disclosure on Marlon Samuels , which was quickly written off as an aberration on the part of this gifted but tempestuous cricketer.

Under the principle of natural justice one had to allow him to continue playing till proven guilty!

Murder mystery

Only time can tell if the legion of cricket lovers will ever have a satisfactory answer to the Woolmer murder mystery.

Historically, the fingers have always pointed to the sub-continent as the root of all evil but then, people in the know feel it could be the tip of an iceberg of a major international scandal.

What if it's actually so? The multinationals, the TV channels who have sunk their millions to buy into their share of the World Cup pie, will not be happy at all the negative publicity. The ICC needs to find an answer to this fast, or otherwise, the cash cow may stop delivering!