In the price list provided by the middle-man Mazhar Majeed to the NoW, a no-ball is a small item, worth no more than £10,000. The most common form of spread betting is on "brackets". A punter will bet on the number of runs scored by a batsman or conceded by a bowler between brackets, say the 20th and 29th overs of an innings. Fixing a whole match is difficult and expensive. 

Australia's plight at Sydney was not much different from England's at Lord's in August when they, too, were saved by an eighth-wicket stand after being in a parlous position. One sliver of evidence suggesting that the Lord's game was not fixed is Majeed's telling the NoW that Pakistan would not fix The Oval or Lord's Tests — "because we want Salman Butt to be captain for a long time". You bet they did. 

Responsibility for detecting corruption rests with the ICC's anti-corruption and security unit (ACSU), set up 10 years ago. Initially, the unit had some success, but recently it has been engaged by small-fry from Kenya and the West Indies. Optimists suggest that this is evidence of the unit's deterrent effect. Pessimists observe the volumes of money swilling around the Indian Premier League (IPL) and have their doubts, especially as Lalit Modi, the panjandrum of the IPL, arrogantly refused to admit ICC officers to matches in the League's first two seasons. Modi himself now faces allegations of corruption, but damaging and insistent rumours about fixing in the IPL's second season, held in South Africa, have seeped throughout the game, and nothing visible has been done about them.  

The Indian subcontinent is international cricket's pressing problem. That is where the money is. It flows from TV companies who have audiences of tens of millions, and it oils the business of illegal bookmakers. Since the ICC has no political or police powers, it cannot infiltrate and expose bookies. In the English-speaking nations in which betting is legal — and started 300 or so years ago with gambles on horse racing and cricket — the solution seems simple: the Indians surely ought to legalise gambling. This is like Indians saying to English-speaking nations that the problem of a vast and lucrative trade in drugs could be controlled simply by legalising them. It is not an option. 

Crime is the unit's business. Punishment involves the wider organisation. The ICC is run by a chief executive — presently a South African called Haroon Lorgat — but all the themes for the mood music are composed by the ten-member executive board. A highly politicised organisation, the board is deeply divided, with India leading a majority which includes Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, often supported by South Africa. England, New Zealand, the West Indies and Australia form the opposition, though Australia have flirted with India recently. The Indian bloc is powerful enough to have vetoed Australia's choice for board chairman, and its attitude to the rules is, shall we say, more permissive than exacting. Pakistan persuaded its allies to change the result of a Test in which they refused to play when accused of ball-tampering. The match was awarded to England. Until it was over-ruled by its own cricket committee, the executive board declared it a draw.