Posted by Blogger Name. Category:
Chris Cairns
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Cricket
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Jonathan Millmow
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Lance Armstrong
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Lou Vincent
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Match-fixing
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Spot-fixing
Jonathan Millmow is a former first class cricketer turned journalist. He played a handful of ODI's for New Zealand around 1990.
Millmow has written a very interesting opinion-piece in today's Dom-Post; under the headline Dark days as spotlight turns on Cairns he writes:
Match-fixing has cost Lou Vincent his reputation, the most important thing a man possesses.
Jail is possible, but seems unlikely, so he is now an outcast.
Vincent is the most unlikely of villains, his weakness his own susceptibility.
He suffers from depression and, for many of us, the impact of that is hard to comprehend.
He is a flighty individual. His interviews with media during his international playing career contained humour but lacked conviction.
His happiest time was out in the middle but otherwise touring life was lonely work.
He was company for 30 minutes but not 30 days and, for him, a game with the kids behind the boundary rope held more appeal than 30 minutes in the sponsors' tent.
Vincent could strike a hundred or run his partner out first ball. Some days he took blinding catches; other days he'd drop a dolly on the boundary. He was wildly inconsistent, not that anyone ever suspected he was quietly feathering his nest.
In the end, he took the crooked path of fixing matches and now must pay a yet-to-be-determined penalty.
Vincent will need good people around him for years to come and maybe life can start again like a forest after a fire.
This is chapter one in what shapes as a shameful period for cricket, and New Zealand in particular.
The opening sentence of this piece says it all. Lou Vincent's reputation is shot. He has been exposed as a corrupt cricketer and a cheat.
His international cricket career began with a flourish when he scored a century on test debut against Australia in Perth. But his career will end in ignominy, with the almost certainty of a life ban from any further involvement in the game he professed to love. He may salvage something from the wreckage by taking others down with him, but that pales into insignificance with the gravity of his cheating.
And then Millmow moves on to chapter two; the one about Chris Cairns:
The spotlight now switches to Chris Cairns. Vincent is yesterday and today's news but Cairns is tomorrow's.
Cairns was a hero but no-one remembers his lofted straight sixes and brisk outswingers these days.
It's not looking good for Cairns. He has been mentioned as the match-fixing ringleader by at least three witnesses - accusations he denies in the strongest terms.
Brendon McCullum's affidavit of two approaches from Cairns in 2008 seems telling. Cairns bats him away as liar.
I know which corner I'm in.
Cairns is defiant in the same way as Lance Armstrong was in his failed fight against performance-enhancing drugs.
There are massive implications for Cairns on what transpires from here.
He won a London High Court libel trial in 2012 against former IPL boss Lalit Modi, who accused Cairns of match-fixing.
Cairns faces a possible jail sentence for perjury if Vincent's allegations are proven.
In 2001, millionaire British novelist Jeffrey Archer was sentenced to four years in jail for perjury.
Like Jonathan Millmow, we've decided which corner we are in. Chris Cairns has made the choice pretty clear. If you believe his denials, then Lou Vincent, Brendon McCullum and Elly Riley, Vincent's ex-wife are all telling lies.
At the risk of repeating ourselves ad infinitum, cricket authorities or the police must make a case against Christopher Cairns, and prove their allegations beyond a reasonable doubt. We understand that there will be news to report on that front later today, but that will remain the subject of a later case.
We've read a lot about the Lance Armstrong case. Armstrong vilified his critics, who included author and journalist David Walsh, Betsy Andreu, the wife of a former Armstrong team-mate, and Emma O'Reilly, his former soigneur. We know how that all turned out when the evidence against Armstrong became so overwhelming that he made a tearful confession to Oprah Winfrey.
Chris Cairns was a very good player for New Zealand, although at times in his career he was a reluctant one. But if he is proved to have been involved in any way, shape or form in match-fixing, his reputation will be akin to that of Vincent's; destroyed.
Match-fixing and spot-fixing are like a pair of highly malignant cancers on the game of cricket. The sooner the tumours are completely excised, and a way is found to prevent a recurrence of the cancer the better.
