Mervyn Westfield's conspirators were hapless chancers, not evil geniuses Westfield's guilty plea at the Old Bailey casts the conspirators not as evil geniuses but hapless chancers who invested in a 23-year-old bowler the power to control the actions of two Durham batsmen as if they were puppets. What was he meant to do: run to the other end, grab the bat and belt a six off his own delivery? Approached by the villains, Westfield might have answered: "Oh, sure, and I'll solve the Palestine problem as well for another 10 grand." Instead he accepted a thankless task that ended with 10 runs being scored from the over and now faces jail. This is not the most pressing point, I know. This cannot have been an isolated case. No longer can English cricket point smugly at Pakistani cheats and Indian bookies and ascribe the spot-fixing scourge to distant lands. It is here, in the shires, in England. Our piety is blown away. Flintoff reveals price of adoration From the tide of commendable broadcasts about depression in sport we see the painful price of failure for people addicted to success. A theme of Freddie Flintoff's BBC documentary (and other recent studies) is that sports men and women suffer mental illness often when their powers are taken away by injury, age or declining form. A sporting life is split in half. The second is largely about loss. Omnipotence and adulation fade. And there is no preparation for that reality. Maybe we should warn them. Or perhaps that would just spoil the fun even earlier.