It has always been thus. History is replete with stories of how status quoists and die hard conservatives have obstructed innovation and change. Ask Kerry Packer, the man responsible for changing the face of modern cricket and he will tell you just how resolute the resistance can be. We are witness now to another such period in cricketing history. Those responsible for bringing about the most dramatic and creative changes in the game - the fixers and their band of comitted players - are being pilloried for ruining the game much as Packer and those who joined his World Series in the late seventies were.
Consider the facts dispassionately. If there is one phrase that has been used ad nauseum to characterise the game of cricket, it is "a game of glorious uncertainties". How much more have the fixers and their dedicated men added to these uncertainties and hence the glory of the game. Those with petty minds will, of course, in typically nitpicking style point out that fixing is designed to reduce rather than increase uncertainty, but they would be wrong. Fixing may indeed reduce uncertainty for those doing the fixing, but increases it for those who don't know which way the match has been fixed. If anything, one should be grateful to these selfless benefactors who are denying themselves the nailbiting climaxes to ensure that others get more of them than they otherwise would. Truly is this a world of ingratiates. In any case, what is the problem with the fixers knowing all before the event. After all, God is credited with similar insider information and not looked down upon for the same. Why discriminate against the fixers?
Consider also the addition to skills that fixing compels cricketers to make. Ask any singer which is more difficult - to sing in tune or to deliberately stay off key, and she'll tell you the latter is infinitely more difficult. And yet, a batsman who has mastered the art of hitting the ball with the edge of his bat (and an edge, at that, which is just thin enough to carry to the keeper rather than elude him and go down to the thirdman fence) is to be sneered at? Consider, in addition, the immense tactical possibilities created by fixing. In those boring unfixed games, each captain has his objectives defined in advance and also knows which are the 10 men trying to help him in the task and the 11 trying to prevent him from achieving the objective. In a fixed game, on the contrary, it is a journey of discovery for all concerned. It might, for instance, be the case in an Australia-New Zealand match that five Australians have been fixed by one bookie to throw the game, but six Kiwis have been fixed by another to let the Aussies win. Let's say Steve Waugh and Stephen Fleming are not among the 11 fixed. They do still have 10 people assisting them in their task, but neither knows which the 10 are. Does that not greatly add to the tactical skills demanded of the two skippers? Does it not also add to spectator interest? As a viewer, you don't know who is trying to do what and hence can have no clue to which of the two competing "sides" is stronger. Does that not really add to the suspense and excitement?
Why then are these messiahs of the modern era being persecuted? A rather naïve, mundane explanation could be that they are, like many other prophets ahead of their times. But a distinctly superior explanation of the facts would be that the Chawlas and Kalras of this world are, unlike the Packers, not white men. It's racialism all over again. Let us as Indians, uphold our tradition of fighting such racial prejudice.