It does not take much effort to go back to the event that provided the seed for the growth of match-fixing in cricket. Remember, one is not talking about betting on cricket, that has been around for as long as the game has been played.

In 1980 the first international one-day cricket match was held in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. This was sanctioned by the International Cricket Council and it marked the start of trouble. The matches in Sharjah increased in number and India’s win in the 1983 World Cup gave the tournaments held in the desert emirate a fillip.

For one, the Sharjah tournaments were built on one factor - the enmity between India and Pakistan. There was always a third team invited (or even a fourth) to make up the numbers, but given the large numbers of Indian and Pakistani expatriates in the UAE, they were the focus.

Additionally, the Sharjah cricket organisers opened the doors to illegal betting of huge amounts on the outcomes by people of dubious reputations. Apart from the cricket, celebrities from both India and Pakistan were invited to attend. The UAE is a peculiar place - you can walk in to the country with a million dollars in a suitcase and no questions are asked but if you carry a Bible in, you may be questioned for an hour or more. Before oil came into the picture, Dubai was better known as the source of gold smuggling into India.

Both India and Pakistan have massive amounts of black money in their respective economies and lots of this money was used to wager large amounts in Sharjah. A great many dubious people offered awards in Sharjah to buy popularity and these were accepted without any hesitation - Pakistan batsman Javed Miandad earned more than a million dollars in 1986 when he hit a six off the last ball of a game to win a tournament for Pakistan.

The UAE is known to harbour a number of people who are wanted in other parts of the world, people like the smuggler Dawood Ibrahim, who fled India in 1993 after he was being sought by police as a suspect in the bombing of the Bombay stock exchange that same year.

It is inconceivable that the ICC was unaware of all the goings-on but it chose to turn a blind eye. Cricketers were benefitting financially - the Sharjah organisers used to present three cricketers with gifts of money at every tournament - and the ICC was being paid the fees it sought. What’s more, any ICC bigwig who visited during the tournament was treated like God.

But the tournaments provided the means for illegal bookies and people of their ilk to gain access to players - one merely had to host a reception in Dubai for the cricketers (no liquor is served in hotels in Sharjah, hence the choice of Dubai which is just a 20-minute drive from Sharjah) during the tournament and one could pal up with the best players from India and Pakistan.

The money attracted other teams too and as the years went on the organisers scored their biggest coup by signing the West Indies, at that time the hottest property in world cricket. Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa all came and played and were feted and wined and dined. Nobody raised any question as to why cricket in the desert was needed. It was something like the Packer days again, only this time the ICC gave the whole shindig its blessing.

Prior to Sharjah, there was hardly any talk of throwing a game of cricket. It took a few years for the bookies to develop their contacts to the point where they could make demands. Sharjah began hosting two tournaments a year soon after it started operations and this provided a fast track for unsavoury activities to grow.

in the 1990s , there was more and more talk about matches being influenced by factors other than the players’ ability. On the Indian tour of the West Indies in 1997, one Test, when India fell for 81 when chasing a little over 100 for victory, was a game that came in for some examination. An Indian writer, R. Mohan of the well-known Indian paper, The Hindu, lost his job after his betting activities came to light. And by the turn of the century, a few cricketers had been found out and banned from the game.

It is easy to gain access to junior players once one knows the seniors. And mind you, the seniors need not be in the pay of bookies, but merely acquainted enough to be persuaded to introduce others to the men who pay cricketers to fix games. After all, if you were told that Al Capone wanted to meet you during the heyday of that gentleman’s existence, would you have turned it down?

The ICC never objected to cricket in Sharjah. The only reason why the tournaments are no longer being held there is because there is no space on the international calendar once the future tours programme was put into practice. The ICC has even shifted its own headquarters to Dubai - simply because it benefits from the no-tax regime in the UAE and also gets free flights from Emirates airline - which is owned by the ruling family of Dubai - for its officials. When an international body has sold itself out in this manner, can it ever hope to call attention to the wrong-doings of its players?

What is remarkable is that in 2010, votes are still being tallied - and this is a country with just 14 million eligible voters (where voting is compulsory). Counting is done in the old way, with people being involved; the type of thinking that permeates the corridors of power and led to this situation is a reflection of why we are in this situation at all.

A couple of months before the election, the Labor party, in what can only be described as a political assassination, dumped its prime minister. Kevin Rudd, and installed a woman, Julia Gilliard, as leader instead. The reason the powerbrokers sent the PM packing was because his poll numbers were dropping; the woman deputy was considered a much better option of retaining power. Australia would have had to go the polls before February 2011 at the latest; the last government was elected in November 2007 and for a period of three years.

But the Labor powerbrokers, who indulge in ruthless culling, with the only criterion being feedback from focus groups, calculated without the conservative Australian population. Exactly how many people would vote for an unmarried red-head who openly declared she was an atheist? A woman who was “living in sin” and flaunting it? A woman who had no children? A woman who had the communication skills to openly taunt the male leader of the Opposition and leave him with egg on his face more often than not?

But in the post-election analysis, one cannot find even a mention of the female factor; admittedly it wouldn’t look too good if one were to raise this issue as Australia’s much smaller neighbour, New Zealand, has already had two women as prime minister, from either side of politics.

Only one political writer raised the issue and that was three weeks before polling day. He pointed to statistics, showing that among men over 65, only 35 percent approved of having a woman as PM. Fifty-eight percent disapproved. Male voters above the age of 45 strongly approved of her male rival.

Australia is a deeply conservative country. It may not appear that way to those who move around in cosmopolitan cities like Sydney and Melbourne, among educated people, among those who have had the chance to travel and see a little more of the world. The fact that Sydney organises one of the better known Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parades every year probably gives a false idea about the deep-rooted conservative beliefs which a large number of the Australian populace cling to.

In the 1960s and 70s, women came to power because they had famous males behind them. Sirima Bandaranaike, the first woman prime minister of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) built her career on the ashes of her illustrious husband, Solomon, who was assassinated by a Buddhist monk. Indira Gandhi of India traded on her father’s reputation. Gold Meir is the only one who came to power on her own merit - and she was said to have more balls than the average man in her cabinet, which include the dashing Moshe Dayan.

In Asia, this trend continued into the 80s and 90s. Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan traded on the fame of her father; she was a singular failure as prime minister. Khaleda Zia and Hasina Wajed of Bangladesh rode on their respective husbands’ coattails.

Of course, there have been women who have taken power on their own and done a marvellous job; I have provided these examples to show that women often do need a leg-up from a male. It never happens the other way round.

After the Australian election, there have been any number of theories offered to explain the fact that the Labor party did not get a majority - the reaction by the people of the state of Queensland, from where the knifed PM hails, the reaction by the population at large to the dropping of a plan for an emissions trading scheme which Labor made a central plank of its winning 2007 campaign, the lack of any serious policy debate during the campaign and so on. All excuses that painted the Australian masses as a thinking, reasoning lot.

Anyone who has travelled around the country knows better. Ignorance reigns, people are poorly educated, and more prone to accept one-liners as an explanation rather than any detailed, well thought-out reasoning. Australia is run, in the main, by middle-aged and old white men whose thinking harks back to the 1950s. And the wives of these men are also as conservative and one cannot imagine any of them voting for Gillard. That is why a man like John Howard, who made race a central feature of his insidious political campaigns, was able to rule the country from 996-2007.

In this respect, Australia resembles America - the US gave an idiot like George W. Bush eight years in power but looks unlikely to give his predecessor, Barack Obama, more than one term.

Despite all this experience and these attributes, Ponting does not deserve to captain the country any more. Not after he decided to bat in the second Test against Pakistan in Headingley last night and saw the team blown away for 88.

Ponting is a great cricketer. He is not a good captain, something I have pointed out in the past.

With all his experience of having played in England, why did Ponting take such a decision? It is being put down to a Test in England in 2005 when he put the home team in - without Glenn McGrath in his ranks - and ended up losing the Test and the Ashes.

He is not the only captain to be haunted by a decision made in the past, one which cost him dearly. Steve Waugh was similarly loath to enforce the follow-on after he did so in India in 2001 and lost the Test and finally the series.

But a captain is expected to have some intelligence and also to use it. The conditions in Headingley were treacherous - exactly the kind of weather that would help bowlers like Mohammed Asif and Umar Gul who pitch it up and can move the ball either way. And what transpired was a slaughter of a very good Australian team.

One just has to see the way Michael Clarke was dismissed to understand what Australia was up against. The ball from Umar Gul swerved at the last minute and uprooted Clarke’s middle stump - and he is a man with very good technique, one who generally plays down the right line.

It’s not so long ago that Pakistan had Australia on the ropes - in Sydney last year. That time Asif was the wrecker-in-chief but Australia managed to escape. Asif was much more difficult to play in Headingley and that should give an indication of exactly how bad the conditions were.

But would Australia have had Pakistan in as bad a position if they had sent them in? Given the way that the Australian bowlers performed when Pakistan batted - in similar conditions to which Australia had been knocked over - they could do little. Pakistan got away to an excellent start and had practically overtaken their rivals before a wicket had fallen.

A captain should have the maturity to think a decision through, not react in a standard way that is pre-determined. Each Test is different and one can impose oneself on the opposition by bowling first just as well as one can by batting first. Ponting, great cricketer that he is, lacks that maturity even today. Either that, or he has no faith in his bowlers - and given the way they performed, one could not fault him for that.

I doubt that Shane Warne, the greatest captain Australia never had, would never have made such a decision. Ponting did and that shows the difference in reading the game between him and the leggie.

Even if Australia does escape from the hole that it has dug itself into due to Ponting’s muleheadedness, it would not justify his decision. Captains must think and then act. Not the other way round.

It was an awful game, presided over by a referee who was out of his depth. One cannot emphasise the role that a referee plays; the man can set the tone by impressing on the players the fact that no nonsense will be tolerated. Once that is done, the referee can melt into the background and let the game go on.

But Englishman Howard Webb appeared to want to be as prominent as the players. He engaged in verbal duels with several players and never bothered to lay down the law early on in the game. The result? There were nine yellow cards given to Dutch players and five to Spanish players; one Dutch player was given a second yellow which meant a red and hence he had to leave the field.

I was reminded of the 1990 final when Germany played Argentina for a second tournament running; in 1986, the Argentines, inspired by Diego Maradona, defeated the Germans by the odd goal of five. In 1990, the Germans put one man, Guido Buchwald, to mark Maradona and that took him out of the game altogether. But despite this, the Germans only won through a dubious penalty which they gained through the dying swan, Juergen Klinsmann.

Many people admire the type of the game that Spain plays, keeping possession all the time and making the occasional foray up the field. Football is supposed to be about scoring goals, not hanging on to the ball and boring people witless. The quality of passing is definitely to be admired but not when 90 percent of it is backwards in a bid to prevent the opposition from doing anything. It’s a dog in the manger attitude and does the game no good. Of course, no matter what methods a team uses, it takes home $30 million when it wins. The losers get $6 million less.

But the Netherlands does not deserve any praise either. They came prepared to literally get Spain off the field by playing a robust, physical game. Here the referee is to blame; the moment the Dutch started fouling with gay abandon, he should have sent off one of their players. But Webb was more interested in arguing with players and proved that just because one is an Englishman it does not make one an expert in the administration of the game.

For all the horrible methods uses, there were at least seven clear chances when goals could have been scored. If just three of those chances had been taken, the public would have had something worth watching. But in the end, there was just one goal, scored a few minutes from the end of the two-hour-long game.

By the time 2014 comes around, if FIFA has not put in place some kind of system to use video replays to avoid the kind of horrible refereeing errors seen in the 2010 tournament, then football will be in danger of becoming the laughing stock of all the codes.

Then there were two former AFL players who made disparaging comments about Aborigines. But when it comes to xenophobia and racism you can’t beat the US of A.

Time magazine columnist Joel Stein recently demonstrated the supremacy of that country in the practice of racism - through the written word. In a column that expressed regret about the fact that Edison, the town in New Jersey which he grew up, was no longer lily white, Stein bettered even many of those who were masters of this art in the old Jim Crow days.

Stein’s beef was with Indians, who have apparently settled in Edison in such large numbers that they have changed the complexion of the town. Restaurants which once served white people’s food now serves curry, theatres which once screened movies fit for the white man now screen Bollywood masala. Stein didn’t miss out on a contemptuous reference to Hindu deities. He had the whole bag.

If all that wasn’t enough, Stein went one step further and threw in a reference to the insult levelled at Indians in Edison - dotheads - evoking memories of the infamous Dot Busters hate group which was responsible for a number of crimes against Indians in the 1980s.

There was more: Stein said he had no problem with Indian engineers migrating to his hometown; he didn’t like it when the lower classes such as merchants came in in numbers. I have never read a column where someone manages to bring in every possible racist angle within such a short stretch. One has to hand it to Stein - if the Ku Klux Klan is looking for a grand vizier, they know where to look.

If the column was about any group of white people and was written in the same vein, Time would never have published it. That’s something one can say with certainty. But people of colour - even the US president Barack Obama - are somehow illegitimate in their own country. There is still a bunch of ignorant, stupid Americans who claim that Obama was born outside the US.

Stein’s open racism - and the pathetic defence he offered - are examples of the fact that people whom one considers civilised are quite often not what they seem. What is inside comes out when people are under pressure and shows their real character. Of course, after the deed is done, we have the pathetic defence: “I never meant to hurt anyone. I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”

Surprising that people who lay claim to being educated know so little about themselves.