Daily Times

Is cheating in sports a simple black and white discussion? Throughout sporting history, cheating has existed in every sport in some way, shape or form, which has caused whatever sports it is to become damaged, sometimes permanently. There are many different ways to cheat in cricket such as ball tempering, placing bets on teams, ball biting, rubbing dirt and, the biggest one of them all, spot fixing. Mohammad Aamir will not be thought of as one of the best bowlers Pakistan has ever produced but it may well be that his most significant mark on international cricket has yet to be completely realised, as the born-again cheat is still fighting to help clean up his sport.

Now that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) wants forgiveness for his crime and has allowed him to join the national training camp set up for the World Twenty20 to be held in India next year, there will be much reflection on and plenty of scepticism over his impressive palmares. Of course, there will be many who will forever insist these achievements are rendered effectively meaningless and indelibly tainted, since they will never forgive nor forget how Aamir cheated during his prime years and served a ban.

Yet, equally, there are those who will feel that the 23-year-old’s greatest contribution to the sport was to openly lay bare the details of his cheating (of course after the courts found him guilty) and to subsequently go through rehabilitation work to make amends for his deceit and to become a crusading force for cheating in the sport. After all, the man who came back from his spot-fixing ban to play an instrumental part in first class cricket and the Bangladesh Premier League has never tried to come across as ‘holier than thou’.

He was dirty, serving half of a six-month sentence in Portland Prison in Dorset and a five-year playing ban he accepts, and he reckons he deserved to pay for his disgrace, stripped of a national team membership and with his reputation forever shredded. He says, he does regret the path he took, even if he felt there was a silver lining in how his downfall enabled him to reflect on his life as it seemed to be tumbling into calamitous free fall.

Surely, Aamir would argue, it is better to reintegrate sportsmen like him and his accomplices, Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt, to make comebacks while beating the drum for clean sport than to make untouchable outcasts of them. While there has been a clear opposition to Aamir’s re-integration into the national team, the general public is of the view that Mohammad Aamir should be given a chance to rehabilitate himself in the public arena and prove his worth, and that he should have to earn his place back within the sport. It is one thing to serve time and another to be rehabilitated. The uncomfortable truth is finding out if there is a way back for Aamir?

The jury is out on whether lifetime bans are incorrect for first offences because they offer no rehabilitation. They offer neither hope nor any way to better the world of sport. These and other contemporary issues pose unprecedented challenges to the integrity of cricket as a sport. Accordingly, definitions and standards for what constitutes cheating versus what constitutes fairness have never been so needed or consequential. Yet, while the integrity of cricket depends on fairness, the commitment needed to provide it in a viable present day form does not seem to be in place. Hence, what is perhaps the greatest threat to both the integrity and health of cricket is an onslaught of innovatory techniques. This allows gaining advantage by any means possible. At present, outrageous incentives seem to favour the continued erosion of fairness in sport. The financial and other benefits of gaining competitive advantage via sophisticated cheating techniques are significant while the benefits of catching cheaters are not. The growing corruption in sports challenges begs a disheartening question: has fairness become impossible in modern sports?

As the PCB press release suggests, the core of the debate — at least on the surface — is about societal atonement versus legal atonement. Judicially, Aamir has served his time and the court of public opinion clearly agrees. But should cheating of any kind be tolerated? Why do players feel the need to cheat in the first place? It is a fundamental part of the justice system and society in general that a person serves the punishment that the court determines is appropriate and, providing that has been done, an individual is entitled to be released to continue with his or her life. Though this does not adequately account for the public passion and anger lurking beneath the surface of some others, many of those involved in this line of thinking portray Aamir as a young man with a bright, important future. This is not an easy argument to make but it is the correct one.

He is hounded by a social and mainstream media lynch mob. I do not think that the conduct policy is a deterrent. Human beings often make choices that are self-destructive and not in their best interests. As far as I am concerned he is guilty because that is what our judge and jury court system has determined. But to use legal jargon, he has served his time and paid his debt to society even though he will remain as someone who brought disgrace to the game. For some, justice will only ever be about punishing a criminal. Yet, punishment is also supposed to be about the rehabilitation of offenders so that, when they are released, they are able to go back into society and play a full, responsible and law-abiding part in it. If we continue to hound Aamir out of the game, who will ever employ him? Should the government change the law to say those convicted of certain crimes can work again and others cannot? It will never happen. For those who say Aamir deserves to be more severely punished, stopping him from playing cricket is the perfect way to do it but they are not far away from saying we should have “locked him up and thrown away the key”.

The writer is a professor of Psychiatry and consultant Forensic Psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com