Could pattern recognition be a key to the fix?

Monumental wides, balls sprayed illogically either side of the wicket, unfathomable passages of play, experts shaking their heads... but enough about Mitchell Johnson, what about that spot-fixing, eh?

Okay, that's a cheap shot at Mitch, but in sentencing Butt, Asif and Amir [three names that will now forever be bracketed together, no pun intended] Mr Justice Cooke pointed to the 'insidious nature' of what they had done. He was right, because what they have done is cast doubt, suspicion and fear where there was none: Edgbaston '05, Australia's second innings, Shane Warne steps too far back in his crease and knocks off a bail with his heel; Trent Bridge 2010, County Championship final day, Notts win the title on countback after taking the three Lancashire wickets they needed for a bonus point in 4.4 overs of the final session; Edgbaston 2011, spinner Amit Mishra bowls nine no-balls in England's only innings; Cardiff 2011, Sri Lanka lose eight wickets for 49 runs in the last session of the match; Sabina Park 2009, England second innings, 51 all out in 33.2 overs...

All of these events were straight up. They were unusual, but in the way that we want sport to be unusual, and they happened within the broad paradigm of credibility, they weren't without precedent. But as Cooke noted, insidious cheating turns the eye inwards. Ultimately, how do you tell?

The ineptitude of Butt's fixing ring does not help any, either. The loud-mouthed, loose-lipped, vainglorious Mazhar Majeed was an accident waiting to happen. In turn, Butt and Mazhar were so unsure of Asif's loyalty they were paying way over the odds for his over-stepping, and Amir provided joke no-balls that couldn't do anything but arouse suspicion. No international cricketer is that bad [and yes, you can insert your own Mitch or Harmi joke here]. We can probably assume that there are or have been more sophisticated, less porous, more professional operations going down.

It still took a sting as well-financed and sharply executed as the News Of The World's to produce a strong enough case to convict. It's notable that the Crown Prosecution Service decided to focus their case on the no-balls rather than other evidence offered by the ICC's Anti- Corruption Unit in the wake of the story's publication, because it was really only the no-balls that proferred a provable moment.

The News Of The World has gone, and the likelihood of another sting is remote. The Anti-Corruption Unit certainly could not undertake one. The game will continue to throw up its occasional collapses and catastrophes, its offbeat outcomes. Well-meaning commentators and ex-pros may speculate about them. but there's little more they can do. So the question grows: how does cricket protect itself?

Perhaps one key lies in the desire of the best teams to improve. Andy Flower's stats department at Loughborough has watched and logged every ball bowled in international cricket in the last five years. Other sides are doing the same. From that information, they're looking to extract patterns, to identify and recognise both the obvious and the unique about teams and individuals. That data offers some kind of baseline of performance that might be adapted when looking for the kind of events used by spot-fixers and gamblers. An obvious example would be scoring patterns produced in 'brackets', which, by the nature of them being set out before the game starts, might lie at odds with the rest of the play around them. Statistical analysis is, in a way, the ultimate in vigilance.

Most fixing demands the involvement of the captain, and there are a finite number of those. If they can be made part of the process - an ICC quorum that brings them together and offers them the chance to meet and talk and establish common cultures within their teams - might offer a stronger grasp on control of the game.

These are small things. The best protection is for the broad internal culture of international cricket to provide its own defence. Mohammad Amir, 18 years old, from a background beyond the experience of most English or Australian players, walked into a nightmare. His captain was corrupt, so were his team-mates, and his family were being threatened by bookmakers' heavies. It's asking a lot of a kid to make a stand against all of that, even if knew how to do so.

It has been a personal tragedy for him, and the laws of natural justice need to apply. Prison is probably not the place for Amir, at least not for long. In mainstream society, once a man has served his punishment he's free to resume his life, his debt paid. Amir must be allowed to do the same within cricket once his ban is served. Rehabilitating him into a game that has found new ways to police itself would be the ultimate victory over what has happened.

News of the Screwed

The world does not really require any more comment on spot fixing, so relax - there will be none here. But there is one small element of the story that is worth mentioning.

On 2 and 9 May 2010, the News Of The World, the paper that ran Sunday's allegations, exposed John Higgins, a champion snooker player, as a match-fixer too. The stories were accompanied by a video, not dissimilar to Sunday's, that showed Higgins and his manager agreeing to fix the outcome of a snooker match. Higgins was suspended by the WPBSA, snooker's governing body. Snooker is another sport that has been haunted by fixing, and its existence as a revenue-generating TV machine is under far greater threat than cricket's.

Yet the Higgins case, superficially a damning one, has not yet stood up to examination. An investigation led by the website Sporting Intelligence raised some serious questions about the veracity of the video and the story itself. Higgins will face a disciplinary hearing in September, and he maintains his innocence.

His case is unconnected to the Pakistan one, and yet there is a gap between the requirements of a newspaper story and a proven case of spot-fixing in cricket. The News Of The World is concerned with selling newspapers, not helping cricket solve its problems. Another story is expected next Sunday, perhaps concerning the Australia-Pakistan Test in Sydney last winter.

The evidence seems far firmer with regard to Pakistan than it does with Higgins, and perhaps it is. But it might be worth not chucking any more tomatoes at donkeys until it's been properly interrogated.