End of the road for Samuels ?
A PHONE call from an illegal bookmaker to room 206 of the Pride Hotel in Nagpur, India during January 2007 has come back to haunt Marlon Samuels, whose likely suspension will upset the West Indies’ preparation for the series against Australia, threaten the enigmatic batsman’s career and remind the cricket world that the dark forces of corruption are never far away.
Seven years after Steve Waugh entrusted Samuels, then 19 and making an impressive Test debut in Australia, with a piece of his treasured red rag, a West Indies Cricket Board disciplinary committee found him guilty of receiving “money, benefit or other reward which could bring him or the game of cricket into disrepute”.
The verdict was made public as Australia arrived in Jamaica for the first of three Tests against the fallen Calypso kings. The offence carries a mandatory two-year ban - and a maximum of life - unless the International Cricket Council offers him a dramatic reprieve.
Samuels may never have delivered on the promise Waugh detected, but he will be sorely missed from a West Indies team that is not assured of the presence of captain Chris Gayle, battling to overcome a groin injury in time for the first Test, starting at Sabina Park on May 22.
Samuels was accused by Nagpur police of providing team information to an illegal bookie, Mukesh Kochar, during a taped telephone conversation before a one-day international against India. West Indies board corporate secretary Tony Deyal said the investigation established that the bookmaker paid for a Samuels’s hotel room, and the batsman had been unable to produce evidence that he had repaid the loan.
“They looked at the circumstances - he did take the money, but there was no proof that there was a link, that he provided information,” Deyal said. A second charge, of “directly or indirectly … engaging in conduct prejudicial to the interests of the game”, was therefore dismissed by the disciplinary committee.
The ICC’s anti-corruption unit has worked to rebuild the game’s credibility since international captains Salim Malik, Mohammad Azharuddin and Hansie Cronje received life bans for their part in match-fixing scandals, and to increase player awareness about illegal bookies.
Controversy has never been far from the young Jamaican, who earlier this year was banned from bowling his off-spin in international cricket because of an illegal action. Despite averaging more than 50 on the recent tour of South Africa, his Test average is a mediocre 28.73 after 29 matches. Waugh’s red rag was supposed to bring luck, but Samuels has rarely matched his swagger with substance and now his undeniable talent looks set to remain unfulfilled.
The Samuels case contains no suggestion of match-fixing, but the ever-present threat of illegal bookmaking was underlined this month when Indian Premier League co-founder Inderjit Singh Bindra told the Herald an estimated $US2.5 billion was gambled on every game in the new Twenty20 tournament in India, where the illegal betting industry thrives.
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