World tennis finds itself in the throes of a major scandal with investigators’ revelations of a long-running match-fixing malaise exposed by the media, which timed the report for the start of the year’s first grand slam event. Much the same can be said about virtually any other modern sport because as yet no one has found a way to satisfy human greed.
But very few sports make genuine attempts to get to the bottom of the matter, weed out the bad elements and contain the image damage, with the exception of soccer which is extremely serious about corruption, among players and referees at least.
When the world’s top player of the contemporary game says he had been offered money to throw a match, the game must sit up and take notice. Safeguards like the integrity unit must be cranked to investigate thoroughly every rumour because the toxic canker of corruption is never far from ruining sport.
When it is being said by private investigators that 16 players, including winners of grand slam titles and ranked in the world’s top 50, are involved in suspicious activity, and that many of them are actually playing the current Australian Open, there must be some fire behind all the smoke.
It is too often the case that sports administrators prefer denial mode, hoping the whispers will go away; only sustained damage to the game’s credibility wakes them up. What greater hypocrisy can there be than allowing betting firms to sponsor international tournaments in soccer, tennis and cricket? This nexus between sport and the betting market must go if sport is serious about cleaning up the stables.
