I’m going to be careful what I say in this post as I don’t want to get into any trouble, but it is with regards to West Indian all rounder Marlon Samuels being given a two year ban for “receiving money, benefit or other reward which could bring him or the game into disrepute”.

The “dodgyness” of cricket was well exposed a few years ago when Hansje Cronje, the South African captain was found to have spoken on a number of occasions with bookmakers and fixed matches, and then the allegations came out for lots of players who were said to have given “information” to the bookies in return for some cash. A lot of the allegations weren’t for downright cheating (although I think a couple were), they were more for giving team and pitch information, and for giving their opinion on the upcoming games.

Whether or not the latter is actually wrong is probably another point, but the ICC quite rightly stamped down on the lot of it. If there are grey lines then people are always going to push the boundaries – much better to have it black and white as to what players can and cannot do, and in recent history it hasn’t been mentioned in the media or around the game of cricket (from a fan’s perspective).

For a while, cricket’s name was tarnished, as more and more info was uncovered – and people began doubting some of the great games of the past. It wasn’t a great time to be a cricket fan (although I was a bit too young to really understand the ins and out of it all).

Now it has reared it’s ugly head again with this allegation, and I really hope it doesn’t start off another round of bashing cricket, as it doesn’t take much for the common man in the street to hear a few stories and all of a sudden cricket is “dodgy” and its all we end up talking about.

I don’t know why the players do it after everything that happened a few years ago – maybe they don’t mean to and do it unwillingly and unwittingly, maybe the money is better than I can imagine – but it just doesn’t seem worse the risk. Samuels (appeal permitting), will miss out on two years of cricket now not just for his country but with new twenty20 tournaments popping up who’s to say he wouldn’t have been picked for an IPL side and make more money than by giving some information to bookmakers.

We wait and see whether the allegations hold true (although having given the ban the ICC must be pretty sure), and what effect this will have on the rest of the cricket world.