Thin White Line , livre ebook

Pitch Publishing Ltd - Nick Greenslade

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173 pages

English

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The Thin White Line: The Inside Story of Cricket's Greatest Scandal tells the story of the spot-fixing scandal of 2010, which sent shockwaves through the sport. It stunned the wider sporting world and confirmed the reputation of the News of the World's Mazher Mahmood as the most controversial news reporter of his generation. It was the start of a stunning chain of events that saw the News of the World shut down, Pakistan captain Salman Butt and bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir banned and sent to prison, before Mahmood himself ended up behind bars. This gripping, forensic account takes the reader through the twists and turns of those fateful days late one August and beyond. For the first time, it shines a light on the tradecraft of the News of the World team and how they exposed the criminal scheming of the cricketers and their fixer Mazhar Majeed. It reveals how deeply fixing had penetrated the Pakistan dressing room, and lifts the lid on the black arts of investigative reporting which would eventually prove Mahmood's undoing.

Sujets

Críquet

Pakistán

Pakistan

Cricket

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Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	24 août 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785317446
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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First published by Pitch Publishing, 2020
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Nick Greenslade, 2020
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Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785317330
eBook ISBN 9781785317446
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CONTENTS
Foreword
1. They don t play for the love of the game, they play for money, women and food
2. I ve got the bowlers, the batsmen and the allrounders two, two, two, that s all you need
3. Tomorrow, the News of the World is going to break the biggest story in its history
4. How could the rest of you not know what was going on?
5. Do you think cricket is corrupt?
6. We have two defendants effectively turning on each other with a view to wriggle out of what each other has done
7. I wanted to tell the truth but I didn t have courage
8. There s a difference between entrapping a criminal and setting up an innocent person
Afterword
Bibliography
FOREWORD
ON THE evening of Saturday, 28 August 2010, I sat on the sports desk of the Sunday Times waiting for the first editions of our rivals to be brought to the editorial floor. The arrival of the early copies of the Sunday papers, usually shortly before 10pm, always livened up our Saturday nights. Here was a chance to compare oneself against the competition. In the instances where one of them had an eye-catching exclusive, there was the opportunity to, in the best traditions of journalism, rip it off and include it in our later editions.
Word had got around that day that the News of the World had something big in the offing because the Sunday Times shared a parent company, News International, and offices with the tabloid. Both titles were printed on the presses a few floors below us at Wapping. This meant that the production staff who worked across both papers would receive advance warning if a larger print run - the tell-tale sign of a juicy scoop and expected spike in sales - was needed. They must have something good tonight, were the words one of them would invariably utter with a cheeky grin as they walked through the Sunday Times floor around Saturday teatime.
When it arrived that evening, the News of the World did not disappoint. The front page said it all: CAUGHT! Match-fixer pockets 150k as he rigs the England Test at Lord s . A frantic effort meant that around midnight the last edition of the Sunday Times sport section headed to the printers with news of the allegations on its front page. By the time I left our east London headquarters to drive back to Kent and Saturday night became Sunday morning, they seemed to be the only topic of discussion on the late-night news bulletins and phone-ins.
If I m honest, I was not quite as gripped as those on the radio. There was always a pinch of salt that had to be sprinkled over News of the World exclusives. Its front-page scoops were often titillating but seldom gave pause for thought. I had also been slightly sceptical about fixing stories in cricket because of the number of people who would have to be in on the conspiracy for it to come off.
On the other hand, this was one newspaper edition that would not be condemned to a second life as tomorrow s fish and chip paper. It was all there in black and white - the captain, Salman Butt, and his two best bowlers named and shamed - and in glorious technicolour - the photos of Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif bowling no-balls to order against England at Lord s. And, if suspicion hung over any one country within the cricket community, then it was Pakistan. The way they had played that summer gave the impression they weren t too bothered whether they won or lost.
When play in the Test resumed at Lord s on the Sunday morning, it seemed that that day s copy of the News of the World was all anyone in cricket or the media wanted to read or talk about. The action out in the middle was a sideshow. It helped of course that the story had broken during the silly season - that period in the late summer when many public figures, readers and journalists are away on holiday and the appetite for and availability of hard news drops off.
It was still dominating headlines, albeit those on the sports pages, by the end of that week and was given renewed vigour when the limited-overs series between the two countries descended into acrimony the following month. It wasn t until I started talking to some of the England players that I fully appreciated how difficult that period had been for them too.
Over the following months, in 2010 and 2011, my interest in the News of the World grew as the drip-feed of phone-hacking and cover-up allegations in The Guardian became a torrent. I can still recall the shock in the Sunday Times and everywhere at News International when at 4pm on Thursday, 7 July 2011, company chairman James Murdoch announced in an email that the next edition of the paper would be its last. I even had to ask one of my colleagues to read the email again to check that I had understood it properly.
Yet the spot-fixing story was never tainted by the scandal that led to the title s demise. Nor has it been undermined by the criminal conviction which ended the journalistic career of Mazher Mahmood, who had been until then the most famous reporter of his generation.
I owned a flat near the News International building and had rented it out over the years to News of the World staffers. I knew from them and from other journalists that its team worked hard (and played hard), were fiercely loyal and were cut-throat in maintaining its position as industry leader. You could fault their ethics but you couldn t fault their tabloid tradecraft. The more I researched the spot-fixing investigation, the more impressed I was by the ambition of its team and Mahmood s tenacity and ability to get the story over the line. For all his hunger to expose criminality, however, I don t think it ever occurred to him or his colleagues that the men they were accusing would eventually end up behind bars.
If I m honest, I miss the kind of old school journalism which the News of the World stood for. It was a world where the hacks doing the digging were often mirror images of the rogues they were exposing: quick-witted, resourceful and - let s not deny it - downright devious at times. Morals, like expenses claims, were made up as you went along. Even if the Leveson Inquiry of 2011-12 had not reined in some of the sharper practices, the dwindling budgets of national newspapers have limited the scope of editors to pursue the kind of operation which Mahmood made his trademark. One reason why the phrase the Sunday papers is not heard so often these days is because the News of the World is no longer around to stir things up.
Was my love for cricket soured by what happened at Lord s in August 2010? Only a little. We had already had a similar scandal involving Hansie Cronje ten years earlier (in another game involving England) and there had been plenty of innuendo about international cricket in the intervening period. There had certainly been cynical remarks in the Sunday Times office earlier that summer when Pakistan looked as if they were going to blow simple chances to beat Australia at Headingley and England at The Oval.
The lesson I should have learnt from those two Tests and which became apparent as I researched this book is that, of all the cricketing nations, Pakistan is the most infuriating and entrancing. It is a country that has produced all-time greats - Imran Khan, Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram and Inzamam-ul-Haq - and others who would be ranked among the best of their generation - Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir would fall into that category. Yet it also seems to be in a perpetual state of turmoil on and off the pitch. Rather wonderfully, it is still capable of producing some brilliant cricket amidst the chaos. It s easy to forget that at the time of the third no-ball bowled at Lord s, Pakistan looked well set to draw a series they had been trailing 2-0.
This book would not have been possible without the co-operation of those who had worked for the News of the World . Foremost among them is Mazher Mahmood. From our first meeting at the Copthorne Tara Hotel in Kensington (nice touch, Maz), he could not have been more helpful. Others who offered to share their time and memories were Colin Myler, Tom Crone, Bill Akass, Ian Edmondson, James Mellor, Neil McLeod, Conrad Brown, Matthew Drake, Phil Whiteside, Paul McCarthy and Sam Peters. Rebekah Brooks and Angus McBride of News UK also helped facilitate access to some of the key documents from the paper s archive.
From the England side in the Lord s match, Andrew Strauss, Graeme Swann, Alastair Cook and Paul Collingwood shared their thoughts. Though he arrived in this country shortly after the Test, Shahid Afridi s perspective of his Pakistan team-mates was critical. Former England captain Michael Atherton, now a peerless broadcaster at Sky and cricket correspondent at The Times , agreed to meet and was particularly helpful in the telling of Mohammad Amir s story, as was another of his England predecessors, Mike Brearley.
Both Atherton and Brearley pointed me in the direction of Amir s solicitor, Gareth Peirce.