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Is the scourge of match fixing still present in Pakistan’s Cricket? This question has again started to pester many. “A match lost is a match fixed” was a popular and commonly used epithet some years back, but it diminished after a massive crackdown on match fixing by Pakistani authorities, resulting in ban of players like Salim Malik and Atta-ur-Rehman. But it is also an open secret that many big fishes survived and still have high influence in Pakistan’s cricket.

The first serious allegation came to surface with the debacle of Oval Test between Pakistan and England, where forfeiture of match against Pakistan resulted in an English win. But many thought that it hadn’t to much with match fixing and it was all due to the stubbornness and dumbness of Pakistani captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq.

The continuous hopeless and miserable performance of Pakistani Cricket team in all trades of game perhaps seems as skulduggery to some, but I don’t think so. Though in public, many people are pointing fingers towards Bob Woolmer, Inzamam, Ramiz Raja and Mushtaq Ahmed, it seems unlikely, if not impossible. The reason is that they have nothing to trade. No talent, no skill, no consistency and no will, none whatsoever. The ignominious and opprobrious defeats over the course of past months are the result of their incompetency not of any match fixing. No not even in South Africa, which is littered with such scandals.