Shillong, Dec 11: The match fixing rot runs deep and won’t be easy to remove. A month after nine current and former players of three Shillong Premier League clubs were banned in Mizoram (and then subsequently in Meghalaya) for suspected match fixing, TSR has discovered that another Nongthymmai SC player has carried on appearing for the club despite having been sanctioned by Football Delhi earlier this year.
Sannik Murmu (pictured) was one of 10 footballers in Football Delhi (formerly the Delhi Soccer Association) tournaments who were given lifetime bans in July for suspected match fixing, match manipulation or spot fixing, call it what you will.
Since then, however, Murmu went on to play in the Calcutta Football League and now the SPL. Although the Mizoram Football Association made their bans public and this was then picked up widely by news media, the Delhi action was less publicised, though Sportstar did report it, and this is probably how the midfielder managed to move around without being noticed. As of now there is no suggestion that he is or was involved in anything untoward in Nongthymmai.
Murmu and five other players of Tarun Sangha FC were handed bans by Football Delhi with the remaining four coming from two clubs – Rangers SC and Ahbab FC – that were involved in a blatant example of fixing that was widely covered in the media back in February.
It hasn’t been spelled out what exactly Murmu is alleged to have done but his unhindered presence in joining an SPL team suggests that the problem of match fixing won’t be an easy one to solve. TSR wasn’t even looking at him as a suspect as we had our eye on a couple of other Nongthymmai players who were awful in their most recent defeat. In that game Nangkiew Irat SC scored three goals after being reduced to 10 men to win from behind against Nongthymmai.
Yes, mistakes happen, fantastic comebacks happen but the insidious effect of fixing is that it makes everyone a suspect.
A Goa football official told a different publication that players who fix tend to move around in groups from state to state and there are certainly a large number in the SPL who have played together before in Delhi, Goa, Mizoram and elsewhere. That could just be a coincidence or something worse but that should also make fixers easier to spot. If local players are involved it could be harder to expose them. There are many players in different SPL clubs who can almost be guaranteed to make mistakes that lead to goals against their team and several of these are locals.
Perhaps the only way to end match fixing is for bookmakers to stop offering bets on the SPL and the public to stop putting bets on the matches. After all, with no guarantee that the games aren’t manipulated, you’d have to be naive, stupid or crooked to bet on the SPL.
(File photo)