This year disgust with cricket peaked - off and on the field. If you didn't have the match-fixing scandal, you had India collapsing for 55 (or was it less?) at Sharjah. Either way, the game sucked.
For a brief while there, we thought that hockey could utilise this opportunity to upstage cricket. The chance was there at Sydney. India came within one-and-a-half minutes of grabbing some serious attention on the hockey field. But after being Pole-axed, we knew that cricket would get back to the top regardless of what Karnam Malleswari did. Too bad.
So, while putting together this year's package as far as fun 'n' games goes, we went for the bookie series, ignoring everything else. No Olympics, no Leander-Mahesh mess, nothing else matters.
We kept our investigators busy February onwards following up on the scam, though given that they are untrustworthy layabouts (why else would they work for us?), we can't really authenticate too many of their findings, if any.
First, we have an Interview with a Cricket Captain. Ever wondered what would happen if two different sets of bookies had bet on a match, but on different results. Perhaps the Battle of the Bookie will help in confusing the issue further.
Now, given the statements from a succession of Sports Ministers, SS Dhindsa, Shahnawaz Hussain and Uma Bharti, it seems as if the Government is just itching to gets its fingers into the cricket pie. We uncover a secret plan in Department of Cricket, Government of India.
What about the one that got away? Well, you know all that tehelka that Manoj Prabhakar caused with a little help from some surreptitious videotaping. Check out the conspiracy theory in Kapil da jawab nahin and Howzzat? Ask the third umpire. And, in keeping with what cricket really stand for, we put forward It's not not cricket.
Then, of course, given the extent of newsprint and webspace that's been devoted to the scam, several people must be finding it difficult keeping up with developments. We provide the handy reckoner in Cronjology.
And, given the convulsions the game has suffered of late, is it still fair to judge our players by the number of runs they score, or wickets they take. We suggest an entirely new set of yardsticks in Raid Alert, the Y2K compliant formula for cricket ratings.
More yet on The United Colours of Betting. And, we then reviewed the year's most popular publication - the CBI's report on match fixing and came up with Do catches win matches?.
Finally, of course, after the BCCI laid down the law and laid low the players, we managed a peek into the inner functioning of this august institution as reported in The Board Meeting.
Actually, we quite enjoyed this cricket corruption thingie since it gives us enough material for last another year or more.


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