The fact is 'betting' in sport has been a dicey reality for a long time. The players seem to know it; as also the bookies. Whatever the implication, sweeping generalisations aren't apt. Not all players are, or have been, 'game' to the ignoble practice. There ends the comparison. Because, the unpleasant side of betting is as commonplace as a disgruntled politician's verbal venom - a multimillion-dollar industry. To go back in history - cheating was as common in ancient Olympia, as much as mugging is on the interstate highway, or the back lane, today. Sport is big business. With advertising, and sponsored programming, money is more than flooding sport, and its 'hallowed' existence. It is lodged fully in commercial big leagues - in every sport you'd think of - from cricket, baseball, football, basketball, etc, to Ssirum, the ancient form of Korean wrestling. The outcome is stupendous. Corporate sponsors are tripping over each other to use sport as a marketing tool. And, what a toolkit sport is - something Midas could not have perceived. With soaring stadium attendances, and high TV ratings, the big bucks are going to keep rolling in. The inference is obvious: if you're in the league, you're in the money. This brings us to the essence of the topic - the big 'score.' A big disgrace too. Sport has become scandalous - the hotbed of corruption. Forget about the hydra-headed monster called anabolic steroids. What has upset the 'apple-cart' of sports conscience is a whole, new vocabulary: 'tanking' or 'betting,' where some players, for example 'professedly' embrace the sordid 'dough' to throw away a game. To focus now on a corollary, baseball, the American passion, which has words - like 'pitching' - akin to cricket. Baseball is gaining ground everywhere. It is creamy business, where ethics are overtaken by greed and arrogance. It's a 'mildew' that has expanded not only in the US, but also Taiwan and elsewhere. As US sports commentator, David Whitford, analysed in his landmark, historical book, 'Playing Hardball:' 'Stadiums are built with tax dollars, roads and other components of the infrastructure are improved for private gain at community expense and revenue streams are diverted from the public purse into the owners' pocket.' Whitford highlights a classical paradigm - the construction of the Florida Suncoast Dome - to win a franchise. In Whitford's estimate, taxpayers would have forked nearly US$234 million by the time the Dome was paid for in 2016. This hardly matters, he says, because baseball is one of life's 'bonding elements' for the average American - an epic of exile and return, a vast communal poem about separation, loss, and reunion. The parity is a telling summary, akin to cricket, with IPL and other T20 tournaments. Whitford demystifies baseball's penchant for renewal - just as it is now with cricket. People, he says, know baseball for its money-making potential. This is admittedly a paradox. 'No fan,' Whitford avers, 'wants to be reminded that baseball is a business. It breaks the spell. (Because) anyone who has been struck by the game in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, understands this: (having) been forced to come to terms with domes, multi-purpose stadiums, plastic playing surfaces, multi-million-dollar salaries, million-dollar average salaries, strikes of the other kind, lockouts, and World Series night games etc., - all of which spring from greed.' Cricket is following suit - the difference being of degree. There's also something more to baseball's franchise. First and foremost, the prospective owners should be local - not outsiders. Each owner should have a net worth of not less than US$100 million, and more. The person should be willing to commit one's entire net worth to baseball. As for the city, it must have, or plan, to build a 'baseball-only' stadium, with natural grass, luxury boxes and state-of-the-art video scoreboard. 'A compliant local government should be in place,' in Whitford's words, 'to minimise, or eliminate political pressures and tax disincentives.' He adds, 'Prospective owners would also be required to face the ball-buster decision by baseball to deny expansion teams a cut of the national TV money in their first year.' On that scale, the franchise fee for Miami alone, as notes Whitford, was set at a whopping US$95 million. The grand idea, says Whitford, does away with community-operated teams. So much the better, he contends, because the league would clearly like to maintain its exclusive, secretive, closed-accounting book posture. Why? Because, baseball has anti-trust exemption. This makes club owners big and powerful. Ask the celebrated media magnate, Ted Turner - it is they who decide which cities get to play baseball and when, though the equation has changed because some of the owners have been asked to 'fall in line' by the powers-that-be in Washington. This brings home a distinct simile. Indian cricket's deplorable syndrome ― the quota system ― of who plays, and when, including venues, aside from a host of other parallels, besides allegations on match-fixing. Also - of too much cricket, of cricketers being used like robots, etc., - most notably in T20 IPL cricket, where auctions and sponsorships rule the roost. This brings us to another similitude. Whoever says that cricket and baseball have parallels - even if the rules are different - is right. What adds drama to the dizzy imbroglio is anybody's guess, no less - any remedy that seems applicable looks more likely to be worse than the illness itself. One way out, perhaps, is - as analysts argue - betting in cricket should be made legal, a 'norm' in Australia and England. Ask the bookies. Or, the 'allegedly' willing partaker. Agreed that you won't get a yes, or no, for an answer. Also, whatever the inference, thanks to human ingenuity, the whole system may yet again throw all the 'rules' of the 'game' to the wind - especially when there are rules in place, what with new rules being framed. There hangs a tale - of profanity beyond the realms of liberty.