These are the words of Paul Condon, the former head of the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, when he stepped down from his post in 2011. Corruption in cricket will flourish again, he said, unless…
By repeating these words two years on, I don't want to be a spoil-sport. Quite the opposite: I don't want our sport to be spoiled by match-fixing and spot-fixing.
Yet the Ashes series ended on such a high note that we can all too easily drift into the assumption that cricket worldwide, and in every format, is in fine and uncorrupted health.
Thanks primarily to Michael Clarke, every player contributed to making the last day of the fifth Test as entertaining as it could have been. Some lamented the decision to go off for bad light with four overs left, but that was the time to stop: it was much darker at the Oval than the television screen suggested.
Both umpires, in my opinion, had an almost perfect game. After a summer in which DRS played far too large a part, Aleem Dar of Pakistan and Kumar Dharmasena of Sri Lanka showed how Test umpiring should be done.
And it would have been most unjust if Australia, having made all the running, had lost. It is a sophisticated sport that does not reduce everything to winning and losing but allows for the shade of gray that is a draw.
But as Lord Condon warned us, we should not assume that cricket everywhere is alright.
A Test batsman has pleaded guilty to spot-fixing. Not a fringe player either, but one who has played 61 Tests and scored six Test hundreds, more than anybody else for Bangladesh: Mohammed Ashraful.
Mohammed Ashraful has pleaded guilty to spot fixing
The owner of Ashraful's T20 franchise, Dhaka Gladiators, has been charged with various offences along with eight other players, including Darren Stevens of Kent.
A pretty capable cricket XI can now be assembled of those charged with corruption, as the three Indian players who have been charged include the Test bowler Sree Sreesanth.
"Cricket will always be the global sport most vulnerable to corruption because of the nature of the game - every single ball generates multiple betting opportunities - and the consequential heavy volume of betting," as Lord Condon stated in the Sunday Telegraph two years ago.
"The fixers do not have to fix the outcome of the whole match to arrange a betting coup. The cricketers involved use the twisted logic that they can deliver the fixed event for the betting coup and still go on to win the match."
And while Ashes cricket clings to an old tradition of different values, franchise-owned T20 leagues proliferate around the world. Some players are contracted to a number of teams and cannot feel deep loyalty to all of them.
Lord Condon went on: "In the frenzy of commercialisation cricketers are immersed in a heady atmosphere of monopoly money bidding for franchises, teams and players. An 'anything goes' party atmosphere, with more and more agents, celebrities and even previous fixers re-emerging at matches can seduce cricketers into a flawed and toxic justification for their occasional spot-fixing."
Have the ICC and every national board "shown leadership and determination to keep malpractice to an absolute minimum"?
Some have, some have not. And to judge by the number of "previous fixers" swarming around these T20 leagues, some as coaches and commentators, I for one do not assume that underneath the surface professional cricket worldwide is in a healthy and uncorrupted state.
