How to rehabilitate cricket: lock them all up

Lock him up: celebrations like Mario Baoltelli's will be a thing of the past. Picture: GETTY

It was, as many have said, A Sad Day For Cricket. On the other hand, it was a good day for the hang ‘em and flog ‘em merchants, who wanted books thrown, keys chucked away, levers pulled themselves, and seemed largely happy that porridge would be served. Personally, I’m not sure I’d wish a spell in Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution on my worst enemy – even on Anthony ‘Nipple Cripple’ Jackson, junior school bully par excellence. And especially not in a country where the convict didn’t speak the language, but many think that Mohammad Amir and the rest have got the least of what they deserved.

Elsewhere today, Neil Warnock wants the Chelsea fans who chanted a cryptic, although despicably-intentioned, chant about Anton Ferdinand to be locked up for two years. 24 months, for shouting? It wasn’t even on Facebook.

But perhaps this is the solution to all sport’s problems, big or small: just bang everybody up, all the time, for anything. Given the amount of free space in prisons, and their superb work in rehabilitating offenders, a hardline approach is clearly what is needed to save sport as we know it.

I suggest that the England ODI team’s top-order batsmen could do with a short, sharp, shock after their efforts with the bat in India. If 18 months in Parkhurst can’t get Craig Kieswetter working the ball around against the spinners, I am not sure what can.

And why should cricket be the only sport to benefit from this excellent jail-based system? Perhaps Andy Murray might not go on the defensive so readily in Grand Slam finals if he’d had three character-building years fighting off armed robbers with a sharpened toothbrush in the showers at Wormwood Scrubs. Would Rooney be corrupting the nation’s youth by swearing on television cameras if he was doing a ten-stretch in Pentonville? Of course not, unless he was being filmed for a fly-on-the-wall documentary by Channel 4. Lock them up: it’s the only language these pampered millionaires understand.

So, yes, a sad day for cricket – but from the tragedy, a glorious sporting future might emerge. One where ill-discipline and play-acting and bad language and handling the ball in the ruck are a thing of the past, because even the slightest infraction is punishable by a custodial sentence. The people best placed to dispense this firm but fair justice are, of course, our Premier League referees. And once Mario Balotelli, or a generation of future Mario Balotellis, find themselves using a bucket for a toilet and sharing a cell with a homesick, amorous, 350-pound safe-breaker called Len, the evil of over-celebrating a goal will be eradicated from the game forever. Let cricket be the guide: only prison can set us free.

Pakistan spot-fixing convictions mean cricket has won a battle, but not the war

Today is not a sad day for cricket, as I have heard it described. It is a joyous day. That Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif have been found guilty of their parts in a spot-fixing scam during the Lord’s Test between Pakistan and England last year can only be a good thing for cricket worldwide.

This verdict can be the beginning of a major clean-up operation. For there clearly is a problem. All of us have known that for a long time. Even for me as former professional cricketer, it took some time to admit that. But there is a problem.

When I was playing, any mention of anything such as this sounded as if it had been coming from a different planet, such was my blissful ignorance. But, starting with the shock revelations about the late Hansie Cronje, it began to emerge that cricket was hiding some sinister secrets in its darkest recesses.

That these cricketers now seem certain to face jail sentences is a very powerful deterrent. It is easy to mock the International Cricket Council about this. After all, it took a sting operation from a newspaper to uncover this scam first.

But theirs is a devilishly difficult task, and I’m sure they will have learnt an awful lot from this case. I actually think they are doing a good job in educating today’s players about the dangers of becoming involved with unsavoury characters.

So too the Professional Cricketers’ Association in this country. They work tirelessly to warn the players, and to give them easy and confidential methods of reporting anything untoward.

This will not be the end of corruption in cricket. I am pretty certain it is still going on, and that certain players are trapped in a vicious circle of vice. There may be more days like today. But this can be the start. And it is a good start.