Has Kaneria sung his last?

Several weeks ago, I was pleased to blog about Danish Kaneria's laudable achievement of 1000 first-class wickets. While aware of his name being in the frame of the Essex spot-fixing allegations, there seemed to be little concrete evidence that the Pakistan leg-spinner was materially involved. Following the trial of Mervyn Westfield and his subsequent four-month jail sentence, it has emerged that Kaneria may have been more than just an unfortunate casualty, caught up on the outer stands of the web of deceit.

What has made him seem untrustworthy was his insistence that he had been cleared not only by Essex police of involvement in the Westfield case (true) but also that he had clearance certificates to play from the ICC, PCB and ECB. Not so, say the three cricketing authorities. Kaneria has indeed been playing domestic cricket in Pakistan but the PCB has asserted that his clearance situation is pending an appearance before an integrity committee. This blatant contradiction of what seems to be a fact does not put the player's integrity in a very healthy light.

Kaneria was named in court as the go-between for the deal with Westfield and a bookmaker. He was also accused of showing off to teammates how he could engineer lucrative deals without the need to fix matches and even show them a bag full of notes. Not a News of the World journo in sight! Of course, it wasn't Kaneria on trial, but Westfield was a minor player in the Essex team of 2009 and would almost certainly have needed someone else to introduce him to such a sordid deal. If Kaneria is innocent he should take legal action himself, not lie about his clearance certificate. After the Butt/Asif/Amir saga, Pakistan doesn't need any more controversy, even if it is Essex CCC which is more immersed in the sorry goings-on than Kaneria's national side.

With another Essex bowler, Don Topley, on record with allegations of taking money to fix games twenty-odd years ago, it does again raise the question of how many dodgy results in the past were down to squalid deals, either between players, teams or bookmakers. I really hope that the cheats are shown up and punished and lines drawn over what happened years ago. We just need to know that cheats don't prosper and cricket - domestic and international - is clean.

Danish Kaneria: 1000 Wickets

These days it's rare for a bowler to notch up 1000 first-class wickets. In recent times, of the big names, only Warne, Murali and Kumble achieved this milestone but in modern times of central contracts and the shift from Tests to one-dayers, the landmark will become even harder to reach. A few years ago, the veteran Glamorgan spinner Robert Croft did it, since advancing to 1152, with more than the thousand in the County Championship alone. Today, a fellow slow bowler, Danish Kaneria became the second man still playing to join the 1000 Club.

For some reason he never really transferred domestic form into the international arena, but this has probably helped him accumulate even more victims. What undoubtedly made the real difference was his stints with Essex. For several seasons he was one of the most reliable wicket-takers in the County Championship, especially in the second half of the summer. Without seasons in the English sun, I don't think any player in recent history has got close to the 1000 mark. In days gone by, perennial contracts with Gloucestershire and Hampshire pushed Courtney Walsh and Malcolm Marshall way beyond even 1500 wickets. Mushtaq Ahmed ended his career on 1407. Sadly, Dominic Cork retired in 2011 just eleven short.

The current leading Test wicket-taker is Harbhajan Singh, with 406. However, he has only 279 in other first-class games to add to that tally. Zaheer Khan is on the verge of taking his 600th scalp while all those pre-England years on the county circuit have propelled Graeme Swann to 605. Such figures are well short of the totals amassed by other veterans of the English seasons. Lancashire's captain Glenn Chapple leads the way on 837, closely followed by Kaneria's successor at Essex, Charl Willoughby on 827. Another county stalwart Jon Lewis is on 798, and both Matthew Hoggard, Chaminda Vaas and Yasir Arafat have high hopes of nudging 800 next year.

However, it's not all about county cricket. True, the paucity of first-class domestic cricket means that Australians and South Africans rarely score huge volumes of first-class runs or take shedloads of wickets, at least not on home soil. India and Pakistan offer more opportunities, and it was playing for Habib Bank that Danish Kaneria captured his 1000th scalp. Indeed, I've had this article on ice for three weeks, when I spotted he was on 999. Having missed the last two fixtures I was relieved that Kaneria was back in the side, and Fahad Iqbal of PIA was clean bowled to give him that elusive number 1000. The leg-spinner has in the past few years suffered more than his fair share of injuries and fallen foul of match-fixing allegations (since dropped) and the Pakistan cricket board, but who hasn't?! However, at the age of 31 (almost), he must surely have time to take hundreds more. Nevertheless, it really is difficult to see where the next 1000-up first-class wicket-taker will come from.