Match fixers should be banned for life, says Farokh Engineer
EXPRESSING REGRET AT ex-New Zealand cricketer Chris Cairns facing trial over match fixing allegations, former India stumper Farokh Engineer on Monday called for life ban for match and spot fixers. Engineer said during a media interaction,
"Match fixers should be banned for life. Chris Cairns is a sad case, what a fantastic cricketer he was, but people now will remember him only for the match fixing allegations and not his cricket."
Cairns is alleged to have attempted to manipulate games while playing for the now defunct Indian Cricket League.
Engineer, who played 46 test matches for India, termed spot fixing as the worst malady.
Referring to the Pakistan trio of Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir who were found guilty of spot fixing, the 77 year old said,
"Spot fixing is the worst of all. Just to bowl a no-ball you get thousands and thousands of pounds. People may think what harm a single no-ball can do, what they don't realise is by doing one such thing, they get sucked into the whole match fixing affair. You just can't get out of that vicious circle."
The trio was banned for accepting illegal money to orchestrate deliberate no-balls in the Lord's Test against England in 2010. However, the International Cricket Council allowed Amir to feature in domestic home matches earlier in the year. The former Indian wicketkeeper-batsman said,
"I am glad that Amir has been given a retrieve and I am equally glad that the other two have been punished because they were instrumental dragging the youngster into the fixing.... any Indian cricketer, if found guilty of fixing, should be given a life ban. Match fixers or spot fixers, they have no place in cricket."
Talking about the Indian team, Engineer also expressed dismay over the preference of foreigners as a coach for the team. Engineer said about the former Zimbabwe captain who coached the Indian team,
"I can't fathom, why we continue to suffer from the complex that foreigners can do the job better than us. I can't understand why so much money was wasted on a person like Duncan Fletcher... I think we should prefer an Indian for the job."
