Yeah, but thats not my problem. As an athlete, if my opponent wants to help me out to earn some money on the side then whatever. But an unfair advantage worth say 20/25% athletic improvement? That basically forces me into either cheating as well or my career becoming pointless.Atleast doping is meant to improve your performance.
Fixing is giving it all away for a leather jacket...
Might it be because cricket is one of the sports which is about more than just physical ability than sports like football, track and field, NFL, etc? Sure, I guess taking something which would improve your strength and speed would give you an advantage but at the end of the day, if Shane Watson bulks up even more than he already is, it's not going to suddenly make him a world beater.Its interesting how strongly people feel about fixing in cricket compared to other sports.
For me its bad, but doping is far worse.
***Begin off-topic rant*** Ah the elitism of cricket fans never fails to astound me. Not picking on you in particular OS, but this sort of posting just irks the hell out of me. I don't deny that you must have the physical ability, but if that's all it took it took to become successful at football or the NFL, then countless guys at my local gym with 0% body fat and displaying all the right muscles would be multimillionaires. They're not. We all love Cricket and think it's the greatest sport in the history of ever. That doesn't mean that we have to be so dismissive about other sports. ***End off-topic rant***Might it be because cricket is one of the sports which is about more than just physical ability than sports like football, track and field, NFL, etc?
Maybe he does and that's why he reviews so quickly.What if Shane Watson ingested drugs that augmented his fast twitch muscle fibres or improved his reaction times?
How was my post dismissive if other sports? If anything it was dismissive of cricket that the physical aspect of the game is lacking. I never said being a big brute is all there is to sports like NFL but it helps.... A lot. Being strong or fast is the entire point of athletics. Not so in cricket.***Begin off-topic rant*** Ah the elitism of cricket fans never fails to astound me. Not picking on you in particular OS, but this sort of posting just irks the hell out of me. I don't deny that you must have the physical ability, but if that's all it took it took to become successful at football or the NFL, then countless guys at my local gym with 0% body fat and displaying all the right muscles would be multimillionaires. They're not. We all love Cricket and think it's the greatest sport in the history of ever. That doesn't mean that we have to be so dismissive about other sports. ***End off-topic rant***
Personally fixing is the absolutely worst thing you can do in a sporting sense regardless of the sports, exactly for the reasons ***** describes. Sucks all meaning, joy, and emotion out of the contest.Its interesting how strongly people feel about fixing in cricket compared to other sports.
For me its bad, but doping is far worse.
Yeah I'm in this boat too.Idk doping and fixing are equally bad imo. Both are against the integrity of the sport, can't see why anyone would try to rationalize that one is worse than the other.
But that's exactly why fixing is so dire, because even the smallest piece of corruption taints the whole sport. You could argue this was the case with doping too (wrt say athletics, swimming, cycling) but I think that's more a case of having many more doping than fixing problems.And in any case what Amir did wasn't "throwing the match" in any way. He was asked to bowl a few no-balls that would probably have had no impact on the match really. It still goes against the integrity of the sport because now whenever bowls no-balls repeatedly there will always be people wondering whether it was done deliberately.
lolI actually did struggle to think of a good cricket example. When I've made the argument in the past it's been on rugby league forums and used the examples of making a tackle when you're offside and raking the ball out in the ruck; they really are outright cheating acts that happen countless times every game, whereas the cricket examples I gave really aren't as such.