Money Matters the Most
Sport is a big phenomenon of today, it is very important part of today life. However, sport is rather contradictory phenomenon. It is connected with big humanistic values and it formats life and values of billions of people on the one side. It is also connected with dirty business, doping, corruption and violence on the other side. Corruption in sport should be matter of concern not of pessimism. We are not speaking about decline of sport values. But we are facing of a new challenge. This challenge is higher as the issue is still not dealt with properly. We may perhaps compare doping in sport with corruption in sport. However, doping has been seriously treated for many years now, with number of experts, scientific background and international co-ordination structures. Nothing of it exists in the area of corruption in sport yet. Just over a decade after cricket was hit by one its biggest scandals, three Pakistani cricketers were given prison sentences last week by a London court on charges of spot-fixing. For the first time in cricket’s history, players face jail terms of between six and 30 months, besides the prospect of never again playing the game. This is in stark contrast to investigations into match-fixing in 2000 where the central figure was the former South African captain, Hansie Cronje. Cricketers from various countries were alleged to have been involved, including a former captain of the Indian team who is now a member of the Indian
Parliament. Enquiry commissions were set up in South Africa and Pakistan following the scandal, but most players got away with bans, fines or in some cases just a reprimand. After the events of 2000, cricket’s governing body, the International Cricket Council, set up theAnti-Corruption and Security Unit to tackle the menace of match fixing. But ironically it was a sting operation by the now discredited and defunct News of the World in 2010 which exposed the spot-fixing by the