Thankfully the Cricket World Cup is nearly over although tomorrow's Final between Australia and Sri Lanka in Bridgetown has the potential to be a great game as the teams are, by some distance, the most deserving finalists. The tournament will be provided with a proper climax that betrays the death of Bob Woolmer, the corruption, gambling and shoddy organisation that has preceded it.
Tomorrow it will be six weeks since the murder of Woolmer. Mark Shields, the Jamaican police commissioner, admits that he is no nearer to finding the culprit(s) which is a situation that suits many of the other devious characters in the game of international cricket. The investigation has determined that Woolmer was probably poisoned using a date rape drug, weedkiller or toxic snake venom to incapacitate him before he was strangled. Aside from that, Shields claims he is stumped.
As we have detailed previously, the betting patterns on the Pakistan v Ireland game were revealing and the solution to this crime lies in a thorough analysis of betting market activity. Although the money that led to the death was traded in the South Asian markets, in an enclosed trading system, the impact of such trading permeates through to all linked betting markets. The leading bookmakers in London are fully aware of these market dynamics and the trades that they accepted may be easily sourced. Obviously, this may only lead to a chain of individuals but it would seem a rather suitable place to begin an inquiry. If our Trading Team are able to piece together this partial picture on a sport which is peripheral to our main concerns, it is most surprising that Ladbrokes, William Hill, Betfair and the rest of the big London firms have not publicised the peculiar betting patterns that existed across both matches on that fateful Saturday. If I were a layer and I was detecting significant money on two outcomes that, in combination, had a 800/1 chance of fruition, I would alert the relevant authorities - and I mean prior to the match. The bookmakers are not willing to go public with what they know even after the death. Why?
Bookmakers dread anything that links their business sector with corruption. Even on occasions when London firms are not directly involved in a particular manipulation, the publicity for such corruption feeds through to the public consciousness and people may start asking questions of other sporting events too. Obviously, spectacular society cannot allow this state of affairs. So they keep their heads down while continuing with their psychopathic business strategies hoping that the news item disappears from public perception. We said at the time of Woolmer's death that the very least that the global game of cricket should be seen to be doing was to ban all further betting on the World Cup. Obviously, that was a non-runner. But, much more disturbingly, there have been a number of other corrupted games since the murder - check out the data on South Africa versus Bangladesh for example. Turnover and profit is all that entertains the imaginations of these operators and the bookies were never going to let a murder get in the way of their trading strategies.
And the media is complicit in this state of affairs too. The disappearance of the Woolmer news item has been remarkably swift - when was the last occasion that any of the mainstream British media pursued this story? Personally, I cannot remember one occasion in the last 6 weeks where Sky Television has even mentioned the murder. Similarly with the extension of the investigation into match fixing in Serie A - the British media is desperate to prevent linkage between sport and corruption and, if such linkage is unavoidable due to the magnitude of the story, then the media trawl out the old argument that corruption is for other countries but would never happen in good ol' Gross Britannia. Really?
Some of the same British bookmakers that have trading pattern evidence of the peculiarities in the two gambling games on the Saturday of Woolmer's murder are also directly involved in manipulations of outcome of English football matches both collectively and individually in a fragmented cartelisation structure. If we chose to do so, we could inform you of which bookmakers are linked to which corrupt individuals across the planet in a range of different sports - we have absolute concrete evidence. One of the most surprising aspects of the possession of this information regarding the corruption of the world's leading sports is the lack of interest from the regulatory authorities and governments with respect to this criminality. Nobody wishes for the apple cart to be upturned. Governments create massive amounts of income through their adjacent linkages to the gambling sector - in Britain, think super-casinos, lotteries, horseracing, poker being made legal in pubs, online gambling as well as the colossal turnovers related to the major sports etc etc. We have to ask the question - "who guards the guardians?". Unfortunately, the answer is nobody...
The World Cup itself has been disastrous in other ways. The elimination of the gambling nations of India and Pakistan produced a Super-Eight's series that simply wasn't super at all. There were numerous mismatches between Ireland/Bangladesh and the leading teams and the competition structure allowed the major teams to rest players in matches to maintain a potential edge for later in the competition. The ticket pricing has resulted in empty grounds as people in the Caribbean have far more sense than to hand over a month's wages to watch a corrupt cricket match in a new stadium on the edge of town with no public transport and a ban on the musical instruments that would have provided the games with the atmosphere that has been sadly lacking. If you are going to have the World Cup Finals in the West Indies then celebrate the things that make West Indian culture so vibrant - don't ban them. Instead half empty grounds full of weirdo nationalists in idiotic fancy dress has been the backdrop.
Meanwhile Ian Botham's debauched partying on his yacht (no doubt utilising the earnings from his betting activities) and Sir Tim Rice inviting all the ex-England players to his private yacht provides a clear indication of the odious income gap that exists between first world establishment figures and the disenfranchised islanders who have had their competition stolen off them by bookmakers, the ICC, insider traders and the chosen few. The robbery of our sporting events by such individuals is nowadays the norm. For example, due to the certainty of one and the possibility of two English teams reaching the Champions League Final in Athens, all true fans are busy buying up air tickets to any of the Greek islands to ensure that, if their team gets there, they will have a chance of, at least, being in the city for the event - I have even heard of some Man Utd fans who are flying to Pisa and ferrying down the Adriatic. The tour operators are using the laws of supply and demand to fleece these individuals resulting in excessive payment for what, after all, is only a probability of being able to watch their team. Leaving aside the quasi-religious nature of their obsessions, these are true fans devoted to their team. Yesterday, I enjoyed (sic) a lunchtime conversation with a certain Matthew Etherington (a Sky television producer). He offered me a ticket for the Champions League final and proceeded to boast how easy it is for the public school strata to source freebies for such events - he even suggested renting a private plane for the journey from Kerkyra to Athens. What planet??? Yet another indication of how a people's game has been stolen by the toffs and the private income brigade.
So, to the Final itself. Australia are awesome but Sri Lanka omitted their three key bowlers (Malinga, Vaas and Muralitharan) from the qualification game against the Aussies to maintain an element of surprise for the Final and, on their day, Sri Lanka can beat anybody. My cricket contacts tell me the wicket will suit the Aussies but I expect a tight tussle even though the Aussies have previous experience of the Bajan wicket.
The only sporting memory that I will retain from this World Cup were the two consecutive fastest hundreds in World Cup history posted by Matthew Hayden against South Africa and the West Indies - no betting, no corruption, no insider trading just pure sporting talent and class.
Two glorious innings do not justify this scam of a competition.
