Cricket fixing and parents’ nightmare
The familiar cricket match fixing is back in the news again. This time, it involves WI batsman Marlon Samuels and bookmarker Mukesh Kochar. The Nagpur tie seems to have scripted another dark Hanjie Cronje chapter… and trouble for Kochar's parents.
THERE WAS AN eerie hush at imposing C 2/8 DLF Phase I Gurgaon bungalow of the old parents of bookmarker Mukesh Kochar, whose conversations with West Indian batsmen Marlon Samuels — taped by the Nagpur police during the January 21 one-day cricket encounter — has triggered yet another match-fixing storm. Mediapersons, who had descended in hordes at the bungalow for more to piece together the big story after the newsbreak, were disappointed by the all shut-up C 2/8. The tall iron gates were locked, all doors and windows were closed and pressing the call bell returned nobody. All the mediapersons could glean from the people they spoke to in the vicinity was that the man they had come looking for, doesn’t stay here. “He stays abroad, in Dubai. There are just his old parents, left all locked up in the huge house with one servant,” they were informed. Some tenacious TV journalists and camerapersons stayed on in the hope of scooping out something for the evening splash. But they too left, finding nothing more than a lazily stretching and yawning German Shephard in front of a portico-parked Toyota, behind the locked iron gates. But, pushed by their editors to dig for more, they returned again to put virtually put C 2/8 in siege and the innocent old parents in a state of paranoia and house arrest.
The silence behind the gates of the bookie’s house was belied by the noise that the alleged fixing of Nagpur one-dayer had begun generating outside. The noise over the eruption of another cricket scandal has already shaken up the International Cricket Council (ICC) and, it is anticipated, ICC may enforce a life ban on Samuels if charges of passing on inside team information to Kochar are proven against him. Another Haqnsie Cronje-like hullabaloo seemed to be in the making.
According to media reports, the Nagpur police, getting a scent of the dubious cricketer-bookie linkup, had put the landline phone of the hotel, where Windies’ cricketers were putting up in Nagpur, under surveillance. The phone-recordings are said to contain the conversations that Samuels had with Kochar. Though the Nagpur police have not revealed details of the numerous rounds of talks the bookie had with Samuels, but it is being reported that the cricketer passed on guarded team-composition information to Kochar to help him in his exploits.
A media report, quoting Nagpur deputy police commissioner Amitesh Kumar, said Samuels provided Kochar two days before the beginning of the match with “information about team composition, who was making their debut, the bowling order and from which end they would come on… We checked details of the conversations with what transpired in the game. They all happened. It is not a criminal matter, but we contacted the ICC, as we believe it is a violation of their code of conduct.”
This shocking revelation will further erode the credibility of cricket matches with stealth fixing ops going on still behind the scenes. Can genuine cricket be saved from bookies and cricketers’ lust for big money is now the real vexing concern.
But there is also another issue, related to the ruthless way in which the media hounds for information. With a posse of mediapersons before C 2/8, imagine the hardship that the old, infirm parents of Kochar must be undergoing. They can’t come out, send out their servant and nobody can go in, having been completely shut off by the scare of the media presence. A talk with the neighbours revealed that the old parent spent a restless night on Thursday-Friday. “This was apparent from the lights that they switched on many times late in the night on hearing dog barks and hearing the slightest noise,” said a neighbour.
Their son’s alleged deed and the entrenchment by information-hungry mediapersons had put the old parents in a real soup. Fixing has put even the innocent parents in a media fix.
The familiar cricket match fixing is back in the news again. This time, it involves WI batsman Marlon Samuels and bookmarker Mukesh Kochar. The Nagpur tie seems to have scripted another dark Hanjie Cronje chapter… and trouble for Kochar's parents.
THERE WAS AN eerie hush at imposing C 2/8 DLF Phase I Gurgaon bungalow of the old parents of bookmarker Mukesh Kochar, whose conversations with West Indian batsmen Marlon Samuels — taped by the Nagpur police during the January 21 one-day cricket encounter — has triggered yet another match-fixing storm. Mediapersons, who had descended in hordes at the bungalow for more to piece together the big story after the newsbreak, were disappointed by the all shut-up C 2/8. The tall iron gates were locked, all doors and windows were closed and pressing the call bell returned nobody. All the mediapersons could glean from the people they spoke to in the vicinity was that the man they had come looking for, doesn’t stay here. “He stays abroad, in Dubai. There are just his old parents, left all locked up in the huge house with one servant,” they were informed. Some tenacious TV journalists and camerapersons stayed on in the hope of scooping out something for the evening splash. But they too left, finding nothing more than a lazily stretching and yawning German Shephard in front of a portico-parked Toyota, behind the locked iron gates. But, pushed by their editors to dig for more, they returned again to put virtually put C 2/8 in siege and the innocent old parents in a state of paranoia and house arrest.
The silence behind the gates of the bookie’s house was belied by the noise that the alleged fixing of Nagpur one-dayer had begun generating outside. The noise over the eruption of another cricket scandal has already shaken up the International Cricket Council (ICC) and, it is anticipated, ICC may enforce a life ban on Samuels if charges of passing on inside team information to Kochar are proven against him. Another Haqnsie Cronje-like hullabaloo seemed to be in the making.
According to media reports, the Nagpur police, getting a scent of the dubious cricketer-bookie linkup, had put the landline phone of the hotel, where Windies’ cricketers were putting up in Nagpur, under surveillance. The phone-recordings are said to contain the conversations that Samuels had with Kochar. Though the Nagpur police have not revealed details of the numerous rounds of talks the bookie had with Samuels, but it is being reported that the cricketer passed on guarded team-composition information to Kochar to help him in his exploits.
A media report, quoting Nagpur deputy police commissioner Amitesh Kumar, said Samuels provided Kochar two days before the beginning of the match with “information about team composition, who was making their debut, the bowling order and from which end they would come on… We checked details of the conversations with what transpired in the game. They all happened. It is not a criminal matter, but we contacted the ICC, as we believe it is a violation of their code of conduct.”
This shocking revelation will further erode the credibility of cricket matches with stealth fixing ops going on still behind the scenes. Can genuine cricket be saved from bookies and cricketers’ lust for big money is now the real vexing concern.
But there is also another issue, related to the ruthless way in which the media hounds for information. With a posse of mediapersons before C 2/8, imagine the hardship that the old, infirm parents of Kochar must be undergoing. They can’t come out, send out their servant and nobody can go in, having been completely shut off by the scare of the media presence. A talk with the neighbours revealed that the old parent spent a restless night on Thursday-Friday. “This was apparent from the lights that they switched on many times late in the night on hearing dog barks and hearing the slightest noise,” said a neighbour.
Their son’s alleged deed and the entrenchment by information-hungry mediapersons had put the old parents in a real soup. Fixing has put even the innocent parents in a media fix.
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