The Shorter Wisden 2013 (19 page)

For so accomplished a public performer, he was rather shy in social situations, and far from garrulous. Perhaps that’s not unusual. But his job – and therefore my childhood –
certainly was. Most of my friends had a dad who worked in an office and came home every evening, or at least at the weekend, and certainly at Christmas. I didn’t. Most families went on summer
holidays, too. Save for a few days in Devon snatched between Tests, we didn’t.

Then again, most children didn’t hear or see their dad on radio or TV on a regular basis, as my siblings and I did. And my access to a game I was born to love was a rare treat indeed. What
fun it was to accompany dad to a match – to Chelmsford, say, or Southampton or Hove – standing as still as a statue in the back of the commentary box, or playing cricket on the outfield
in the tea break, or being introduced to and getting autographs from my playing heroes, then watching and waiting (there was always a lot of waiting), while he recorded or wrote his report of the
day’s play. We were normally the last to leave the ground, often well after dusk.

Then there was touring with the England team as a child, sometimes for several weeks. Who else can boast of learning to walk in Australia and to swim in India, of being thrown into a pool by Ian
Botham, of standing in the commentary box as England won the Ashes at the MCG in 1986-87 and the one-day series at the WACA that followed, then returning to Melbourne in 1992 to witness Wasim Akram
blow away England and win Pakistan a World Cup final? I can, and more. I batted against Trevor Bailey on the beach in Barbados, then met two of the Three Ws at a cocktail party the next evening.
And I bowled to Sir Len Hutton in his garden.

So I have a lot to thank him for. And a bank of happy memories – shared, I hope, by my children, who are old enough, just, to remember him as the concerned and caring grandfather he was.
(The modern world’s ready supply of video and other archives, plus my father’s excellent autobiography, will help them fill in the gaps.) They may recall his near obsession with golf,
which he took up too late in life to have been as good as he would have liked, and the practice putting green he installed at home in an attempt – vain, it transpired – to improve his
short game. They may also recall his ongoing battle – equally in vain – with the many rabbits that used to attack his beloved lawn.

What’s likely to be my enduring feeling? Pride – when he wrote well or spoke eloquently, when he stuck to his guns on an unfashionable point, when people laughed, nodded vigorously
in agreement, or exclaimed to me, as so many have: “Don’t you look and sound exactly like him!”

I didn’t always agree with everything he said, and rarely sought his advice on matters outside sport, but how fortunate to be able to wake every day and read or listen to what the old man
had to say. It saved on phone bills, anyway. And yes, he may have had a wonderful collection of faux swear words, but he did occasionally swear in private, and with the proper words too –
mostly at the rabbits…

James Martin-Jenkins is a partner in a business-intelligence firm, and a keen sportsman. He lives in London with his wife, Nicola, and their three young children.

A full obituary of Christopher Martin-Jenkins will appear in
Wisden 2014.

THOMAS LLOYD MAYNARD, 1989–2012

S
TEVE
J
AMES

After turning left at Oval underground station, we looked desperately for the Hobbs Gate and the end of a bike ride that had begun in Cardiff the previous day at dawn. The sight
that greeted us was wholly unexpected: hundreds of people cheering and clapping. A gap opened. We cycled through the car park and out on to the Oval turf. Around the ground we went, led by Matthew
Maynard, on a tide of emotion.

I’d never expected to be on that outfield again, and I wish I’d not had to return. But on August 21 we were there in tribute to Matthew’s son, Tom, who had been tragically
killed on June 18. The match was a CB40 encounter between Tom’s two former counties, Surrey and Glamorgan. And our 170-mile journey, organised by Ian Williams – a friend of the Maynard
family for over 20 years – was the first event to raise money for the Tom Maynard Trust, set up “to help the development of aspiring disadvantaged cricketers and other sportspeople who
require support with different aspects of their career development”.

The 30-strong peloton featured Andrew Flintoff and many past and current Glamorgan players – including Will Bragg, David Brown, Jamie Dalrymple, Andrew Davies, Darren Thomas and Ryan
Watkins – as well as Jason Ratcliffe and Paul Prichard, two former county players who now work for the PCA. As it reached the pavilion, both teams filed down the steps, united in their
grief.

A video montage celebrating Tom’s career was played on the big screen, then Richard Thompson – the Surrey chairman who had taken part in the ride alongside his chief executive
Richard Gould – presented Matthew with Tom’s posthumous county cap and a Surrey shirt, with his number (55) on it. The Surrey players all bore it on their shirts, just as the Glamorgan
team wore 33, Tom’s number during his time with them.

There was a presentation of cheques from the Trust to David Lloyd of Glamorgan, and Matthew Dunn and George Edwards of Surrey (who were represented by cricket manager Chris Adams). Next came a
minute’s applause for Tom. It was heartbreakingly emotional.

Seeing up close the effect it had, I have no idea how the two teams managed to play the game that followed so soon afterwards. That Surrey won was irrelevant: this was about helping a family
come to terms with the unimaginably premature loss of their son. I know that the ride helped Matthew enormously in giving him a focus.

On his forearms, he now has two tattoos. On one is the first line of the poem
Lend Me A Child
by Edgar Guest, which was read by Matthew’s brother Charlie at Tom’s funeral at
Llandaff Cathedral on July 4: “I’ll lend you for a little time...” On the other it says: “Forever in our hearts. Thomas Lloyd.”

The cycle ride and the creation of the Trust will hopefully ensure that young Tom Maynard, a cricketer of as much natural talent as his father, remains in all of our minds.

For details of the Tom Maynard Trust, please visit
www.tommaynardtrust.com

CRICKET AND CORRUPTION

E
D
H
AWKINS

Never meet a hero, they reckon. But what of a villain? Say hello to Vinay, from Bhopal, capital of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. He is an illegal bookmaker, which
also makes him a scourge of the game, and a malevolent, match-fixing mobster. Right?

When I met Vinay in a hotel lobby, the reputation of his brethren – there are estimated to be more than 70,000 bookies in India – preceded him. All, bar those who work at racecourses
(where gambling, so the argument goes, is based on skill rather than luck, and therefore socially acceptable) are illegal. It is said – by the ICC, corruption officers, national boards and
player bodies – that the illegal bookies are dangerous men from the underworld. People fear them. And so, in truth, did I, as I waited for Vinay, nervously tapping my feet to inane pan-pipe
music.

Yet when he arrived, I immediately felt at ease. There was no cloak, no dagger. His smile was brilliant, his handshake warm, his enquiry after my health genuine. We had already exchanged emails,
Twitter messages and phone calls. What followed was a crash course in India’s vast gambling industry. Over several weeks as part of my research for a book on corruption in cricket, I would
spend time living with him and his family, and watch him run his business (he also owned a construction firm); I would hide from the police, learn how bookies control betting markets, and hear of
fixes before they happened. When we parted, I told Vinay of my initial apprehension. “Me?” he guffawed. “This is too much amusement for me. I hope you know me now, ya? But perhaps
I understand why you were like this. Bookmakers in India are supposed to be all bad. No. We are trying to make our living in a corrupt country, and we do this by taking any opportunity we
can.”

The backdrop to my visit was the sound of exploding myths. Chief among them was the notion that it is possible to place a bet on a no-ball, a misconception that called into question the precise
nature of the conviction of Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer in the spot-fixing trial of November 2011 – though there is no doubt that the
News of the World
sting showed
them to be corruptible. But preconceived notions about corruption in cricket simply collapsed, for it is just not possible to bet on the minutiae of a match: a batsman scoring a certain amount of
runs, a fielder being placed in a particular position, a bowler operating from a specific end – or even sending down a pre-designated no-ball. Why? Because just as Indian bookies are not the
threatening hoodlums of popular depiction, neither are they knuckle-dragging imbeciles. “Do you think we’re fools?” asked Vinay. “If someone says they want this no-ball bet
for big monies, and I’m Ladbrokes in London, I tell them to go away. No bookmaker in the world takes this bet.”

One does not need to be invited into Vinay’s home to understand that any bookie worth his salt would suspect that this customer had inside information. Yet throughout the Southwark trial
of the three Pakistanis and their agent, there was a wilful acceptance that the
News of the World
would have been able to place a bet on the timing of a no-ball, had they so wished. This
was clear from the sentencing remarks by Mr Justice Cooke: “Bets could be placed on these no-balls in unlawful markets, mostly abroad, based on inside advance knowledge of what was going to
happen… Individuals in India were making £40,000–£50,000 on each identified no-ball. On three no-balls, therefore, the bookmakers stood to lose £150,000 on each bet
by a cheating punter.”

In fact, this is impossible. The illegal Indian market is highly organised and, crucially, uniform. It offers only four markets for its gamblers: match odds, innings runs (known as
lambi
), brackets (the number of runs scored in a certain amount of overs), and lunch favourite (essentially, betting that the team who are favourites at lunch in a Test, or at the innings
break in a limited-overs match, will go on and win the game). In the case of the
lambi
and brackets, a spread is set for the number of runs to be scored, and gamblers bet over or
under.

The odds for these markets are provided by four syndicates, who have reached the top of the food chain through their expertise in the field. They charge a fee to bookmakers to use those odds,
then take a cut of the profits from all over the country. Think of the syndicates as wholesalers, and the bookies as convenience-store owners, who buy the goods, then sell them on. Vinay is what is
known as a first-tier bookmaker. Occasionally, because he is highly regarded, he acts as one of the syndicate heads, who are often based in Mumbai or Dubai, sending out odds to bookies lower down
the chain; bookmakers from the second, third or fourth tiers have fewer customers, and receive the odds via SMS, with the syndicate able to reach hundreds of them at once using bulk messaging
software. “All bookies in India are connected,” said Vinay. “They will send on the prices to even more.”

Because the syndicates are so dominant, the potential for the manipulation of markets is obvious. And it is certainly more profitable than paying a bowler to overstep. “The Indian market
is very big and powerful,” Vinay told me just before England’s one-day international against India at Hyderabad in October 2011. “There are much smarter ways to manipulate
betting. Look, I’ll show you.”

On his laptop he logged on to Betfair, the person-to-person betting exchange with more than 4m customers around the globe. After it was announced India had won the toss, he sent updated odds to
200 bookmakers across the country. On the match-odds market, India were favourites at 1.95 (even money would be 2.00). These decimal odds translate into the traditional fractional odds used in the
UK as 20-21: in other words, if you bet £21 you can win £20.

“Now watch how I move the Betfair market,” said Vinay. When he sends the SMS to his cohorts instructing them to lower the odds, they flood Betfair with money – or, to be
precise, with people prepared to place bets at these odds. He explained: “It is currently India 1.95. Watch how they become 1.85 in line with our odds… wait, you’ll see here how
it works… we want to get India short.” Vinay was keen to price India as short as possible because he knew most of his punters would back the home team. Since an Indian victory would
have been certain to cost him money, he wanted to discourage punters from backing them. Seconds later, he chirped: “There, you see: India 1.85 now on Betfair. We have moved the market.”
And all this from a text message which simply read: “India 85”.

This, of course, is not corruption – just the sheer weight of (illegal) Indian money. Yet no matter what wagers are struck, the bookmaker and the syndicates are able to avoid losses by
using betting exchanges to hedge their bets. For example, a bookie may have accepted a wager from any Tom, Dick or Hari of £10 on England to win at even money. This has the potential to cost
the bookie £10. However, when England’s odds during the game drift to 6-4 (greater than even money) – either because momentum has shifted towards India, or because Vinay has
manipulated the market from a hotel room in Bhopal – the bookie can lay off, or hedge, his bets. The original bet risks him £10. But by placing a wager himself on England at odds of 6-4
for £10, he stands to win £15 if he’s successful: £15 minus £10 is a guaranteed profit of £5. (In the case of an Indian win, Vinay would have hedged his position
too, although – because of the amount of money wagered on India – he would be merely seeking to reduce his losses to a manageable level.) Now consider the potential when four or five
figures are involved.