The Bribe.

The money sat in front of me like a paper Mata Hari; fluttering its lashes, tempting me, trying to make a bad boy of me. It was a nice trick I suppose, seeing the cash, looking it at made it so much more seductive; a cheque or a bank transfer would not have had quite the same effect. Not that I needed the money, okay professional cricketers are not paid as much as a footballer or even a rugby player these days, but we still do alright. But 10,000 quid, that's difficult to turn down in any walk of life, isn’t it?

Nah it wasn't the money that was making this tempting, it was a whole range of other factors. Had they come to me three months earlier, I’d have had no truck with them, I’d have told them where to go and reported them to the appropriate people, but three months is a long time in sport, and in those 3 months I had turned a promising career into a dead end. The national selectors had made it clear I'd not be considered by them again after the incident with the girls at the team hotel. A simple misunderstanding, in fact dereliction of duty on their behalf; no one had told us about the whores who try to get kiss and tell stories out of newbies. But there I was sent home from Australia in disgrace,  my international career in tatters before it had begun. And now my county were taking their time offering me a new contract, I was having a shocking season, I think I’d left my form in that hotel room in Perth. My coach had made it plainly clear that unless I pulled my socks up I'd be out. Then there was always that nagging suspicion in the back of every sportperson’s mind, one twist the wrong way could end the career completely. 
So here it was 10,000 to play badly for 6 minutes in one match, to be honest I'd been playing so badly already that no one would think anything untoward. It was easy money, who would ever know? I stuck my little finger in between my teeth and nodded the slightest of nods signalling I'd do what they'd asked.
Except if course it wasn't easy money, oh the deed itself was easy enough, as I said my form was so bad I wasn’t even trying to cheat. But if my conscience kept me awake the next couple of nights, it was nothing to the bombardment of texts, tweets, email and calls that hit me that morning. I’d been set up, the whole thing had been a sting, they knew I was weak and vulnerable and they needed to sell their bastard papers. My street was lined with cars, and TV vans; the press camped on my lawn. Who would ever know, I'd asked myself rhetorically in that hotel room in Derby. The whole effing world came the non-rhetorical answer by way of the front pages that hit my mat that bright Sunday morning.