WAS THE ICC WORLD CUP CRICKET FINAL BETWEEN INDIA AND SRI LANKA FIXED?

Rumours have been rife about the ICC World Cup 2011 final between Sri Lanka and India being fixed. Personally, having followed the World Cup quite closely, I did not feel the need to pay heed to any such talk.

After all India was without a doubt one of the strongest teams in the tournament and had all the credentials to win the World Cup. Therefore as I write this article I do not in any way mean to demean the credentials of the Indian cricket team, however some facts forwarded to me by reliable sources do point to the fact that there is a possibility that the encounter between the two South Asian teams was in fact scripted; scripted to precision before the start of the match.

Many may argue that this article should have been posted right after the match or better still while the match was being played, however, I did not pay much attention to the material forwarded to me, until now. On the morning of 2^nd April, the day the final was to be played between India and Sri Lanka, I received a call from a friend who had searched Wikipedia for the ICC Cricket World Cup. What he saw on the page was shocking to say the least. Before the start of the match, Wikipedia had somehow updated the result of the encounter.

It read ‘India beat Sri Lanka by 5 wickets’ with final scores of both the teams given as well. India 275/5 while Sri Lanka scored 274/6 according to the page. Interestingly though, whoever updated the page did not bother to update the over’s played by both the teams. While the Sri Lankan score was very accurately predicted by ‘Nostradamus’ Wikipedia, there was a slight error in the Indian score tally which was originally 277/4 with 1.4 over’s remaining. However the prediction made by Wikipedia before the start of the match was mind numbingly accurate.

In a cricket crazy nation of 1 billion people, anyone you talked to said India should ‘win’ the World Cup while millions other stated that India ‘will’ win the World Cup. It did not matter how tough the opponents were, in the quarterfinal, semis or the final itself. The fact of the matter remains that many people had claimed before the tournament that the ICC could simply not afford a non-India final for massive money was at stake. Those working in the betting industry had also stamped their approval to India winning the World Cup final since billions of rupees were at stake. According to an unofficial estimate there had been gambling done for 150 billion Rupees.

Many may argue that this is just another conspiracy theory; however, the facts arguing against it being ‘just another conspiracy theory’ are also overwhelming.

Which is why the possibility of the World Cup having been fixed by the ICC cannot be ruled out. After all, if one is to dig deep enough into the not so glorious past of the ICC chairman Mr Sharad Pawar it will be revealed that he has not only been involved in countless corruption scams during his tenure as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra but has also been involved in misappropriation of funds with regards to cricket.

In 2007, an FIR was registered against Mr Sharad Pawar and secretary Niranjan Shah with regards to misappropriation of funds worth Rs.120 million in ticket sales during the India versus Australia match at Hyderabad. Corruption allegations against Mr Pawar are rife and one Indian report reads, “All that mattered to Sharad Pawar was money and profits. It still is what matters the most to him even though due to his complete apathy poor India is dying everyday. Sharad Pawar is the face of the corrupt Indian politician and the decadence of ethical standards and morals values in politics.”

The ICC needs to investigate into the matter with great urgency. The truth might not be revealed for a long time to come, but ICC needs to take all possible steps to ensure that the spirit of cricket does not die with such allegations coming to the fore.

The picture uploaded above is a screenshot of the actual picture received by the scribe by a source. The time is 10:52 am, 2^nd April. This is the actual screenshot and has not been edited or photoshopped. It was removed a few hours later by Wikipedia itself.