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Resistance to match-fixing by our cricketer deserves praise
ROBERT MADOI
What you need to know:
Bosses that make the most of asymmetrical power structures must be called to order. If not shamed into doing better.
Cricket Cranes players are back from the ICC T20 World Cup having won the match they had a shot at winning (i.e. Papua New Guinea) and lost the matches they were expected to lose (i.e. against West Indies, the hosts, Afghanistan, and New Zealand).
While performances with the bat, even in the winning effort against a fellow Associate nation, rendered much more difficult the prospect of being instantly enamoured, nuanced pleasures were still on offer regardless.
The unpretentious excellence of the team's erstwhile skipper, Brian Masaba, particularly registered at close range, with his spin bowling at one point coaxing a TV commentator to talk about it being a throwback to what Shane Warne mustered during his heyday.
Critical praise of Masaba, a shrewd and refreshingly modern student of the game, did not always translate into wider visibility.
Believe it or not, his place on the team was always, remarkably, questioned by many an armchair expert. In a sense, he went to the Caribbean whilst unappreciated at home and unknown abroad.
Now, after more than earning his stripes at the grandest of stages, the 32-year-old has opted to call time on a T20i career that yielded 24 wickets from 63 matches at an economy rate of 5.37.
Along with our golden yellow national strip, Masaba was one of the rare bright sparks that emerged from the Cricket Cranes stable in the Caribbean.
Your columnist was going to cheekily add Juma Miyaji's peroxided Mohawk hairstyle, but quickly came to the realisation that this would be shortchanging the youngster who, together with Cosmas Kyewuta, admirably impressed with the new ball in hand.
Yet, that notwithstanding, it is there for all to see that Uganda put much stock into looking the part in the Caribbean. While the Cricket Cranes received plaudits for their sartorial signature, with Mitchell Marsh, Australia's captain, admitting that our strip looked more Aussie that what his native country has at its disposal, there is one other thing that was impossible to miss.
Match-fixing has been and continues to be international cricket's Achilles heel. So, the revelation that an unnamed Cricket Cranes player not once, not twice, but repeatedly turned down the overtures of a Kenyan bookie should not be treated like a footnote. It is, by all measures, an enormous thing.
Match-fixing, terrifying as it is in its controlled ferocity, offers yet another reminder that the love for money is, sadly, insatiable.
How else would you explain the fact that the heads of athletes with seven-figure deals under their belts have been turned!
Cricket Cranes players do not earn princely sums by any stretch of imagination.
Resisting the temptation to give in to a bookie's juicy carrot is therefore as big as any monstrous six that will be hit at the ongoing World Cup.
Another reason why this resistance from a singular individual rises to a peak of exultation is because poor pay and atrocious working conditions have been blamed for the spike in match-fixing cases in the Ugandan football backdrop. To be clear, this column empathises with athletes who have to endure the misfortune of not being paid for the hard hours they put in.
Bosses that make the most of asymmetrical power structures must be called to order. If not shamed into doing better.
That said; this should not give those on the wrong end of the power relations carte blanche to influence outcomes in duels at a cost. The exhaustion of moral dimensions here should make it abundantly clear that two wrongs will never produce a right.
Other ethical means should be pursued to bring errant bosses to book.
