Anyone who thinks that the News of the World's exposé a couple of months back will seriously affect the sums staked on matches, legally or otherwise, is delusional. At most, anyone involved will lie low for a few months and then start again. All that l'affaire Haider, with a plot as complicated as the ending of The Natural, has done is to drag the murky world of fixing back on to the front pages of newspapers.
What's the real story here? No one seems to know. Is Haider a victim of vicious gambling syndicates, or an opportunist seeking to take advantage of the fact that Pakistan cricket's reputation is at an all-time low? Just as the tabloids are likely to believe anyone who claims to have had intimate relations with Wayne Rooney, there's an overwhelming tendency to believe only the worst of Pakistan cricket.
Though I've never met him, Haider strikes me as a most intriguing character. His Facebook friends' list includes 15 journalists that I know, most of whom he can't have met even once. In an age when many players treat the media like scum, it seems bizarre that a fringe player with a rudimentary understanding of English would be going out of his way to give access to journalists. A Pakistani journalist I spoke to describes him as a "shameless self-publicist".
That doesn't mean, however, that we shouldn't listen to what he has to say. For instance, the RBS Cup match that the Guardian wrote about today. Are we really to believe that a first-class team can make 123 in 6.1 overs against first-class opposition? Or that Salman Butt, whose fastest innings in terms of strike-rate in the international arena is 36 from 31 balls, could make 92 from 25 balls? To put that into perspective, Yuvraj Singh took 12 balls to make the fastest Twenty20 half-century. What Butt did was to reprise that sort of once-in-a-lifetime innings twice over. Believable? Only in Wonderland.
Were Haider's actions simply those of a man who didn't trust his mates? Perhaps. But it should be mentioned at this point that Younis Khan, Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Yousuf and Shahid Afridi have never been mentioned in connection with fixing. All of them are senior players, and surely their doors would have been open for him to walk in and tell them that someone had threatened him.
In that context, the most interesting quote I read was from Haider's brother, Raza. "Just two hours ago my brother called me saying he cannot take any more pressure and is retiring from international cricket," he said, before adding that he "could not get along with the team".
"I wouldn't know what to believe," said a former India international who has commentated on several Pakistani games in the past. "Anyone can come up with a story, but is there any proof? Did he have an agenda?"
When the News of the World story broke, Ramiz was one of the few not to sit on the fence when asked for his opinion. "If you are implicated, you've got to come out straight away and say: 'I've not done this, I don't care what the allegations are, I'm not involved and that is the truth'," he told the paper.
Ravi Shastri, who represented India several times in Sharjah during the days when the Emirates was the hub of one-day cricket, says that he can't recall any instances of players being threatened in his day. "I'm surprised that he didn't approach the anti-corruption unit," he said. "But maybe he just lost his nerve. You could in a situation like that. And it does tie in with what Geoff Lawson [the former Pakistan coach] had to say a while back about players and selectors being threatened."
So after an enthralling series that saw three incredibly close finishes – the most dramatic of them scripted by Haider – Pakistan cricket is once again in the news for the wrong reasons. The administration, just praised by the ICC for taking strong steps to root out corruption, will face many more uncomfortable questions over the coming days.
Back in 2000, one of the other anecdotes we heard centred around Pakistan's greatest cricketer. Imran Khan was woken up one night by an anonymous caller who informed him that four of his players were on the take. The next morning, he called a team meeting and said: "I know how well you can play. If any of you don't perform, I won't just have you banned, but I'll send you to jail."
Maybe Misbah-ul-Haq, who leads the team in the first Test that starts on Friday, needs to take a few pointers from Imran. But it's hard to give speeches when most believe you don't even deserve to be in the team in the first place.
