Ball tampering (which pretty much every international cricket side does to some degree) is not the same as taking money from bookies to underperform, is it now.
Obviously not the same but spot fixers would argue that influencing a 10-over session (presumably only to score 15-10 runs under par in that period only) in a match that should last 5 days makes very little difference to the outcome of a match, whereas ball doctoring resulting in taking a cluster of quick wickets could determine a match outcome.
Which is morally worse - fleecing a few bookies and having very little impact on match outcome or blatantly cheating to gain an unfair match advantage.
That wasn't really my point though, rather highlighting that a few months ago the idea that Warner would have a pre-planned and clandestine meeting with a junior player where he would demonstrate how to, and then convince him to take sandpaper onto the field to doctor the ball would have seemed laughable.
Th situation with a rogue senior player (Warner) using a naive and inexperienced player to cheat is a similar modus operandi to many of the match fixing scandals - Cronje, Cairns (allegedly), Butt etc all similar.
I'm not suggesting for a second that Warner has ever been involved in spot fixing but as an example I'd suggest that if he felt inclined that he would have enough influence over an idiot like Bancroft to convince him to bat slowly for 30 minutes.
I really don't think it's beyond any realm of possibility that there is an element of truth in it. There might not be and I hope there isn't, but stranger things have happened.
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Topic: Pitch fixing / spot fixing (Read 10759 times)