The late 1990s, diligent followers of cricket will remember, was a turbulent period in the sport. Murmurs of match-fixing and betting, which had always been around, gathered momentum till it erupted into a scam that was to engulf — directly or indirectly — several major players from all over the world.

In the middle of the decade, a radio station in Australia broke the story that Shane Warne and Mark Waugh had given information about weather and team composition to bookies. The two cricketers earned no more than a reprimand from the Australian Board, but for the discerning, there was enough indication that ‘something was rotten in the state of Denmark’.

Shortly after, Outlook magazine did an expose on match-fixing, essentially in the sub-continent, citing examples from the 1996 World Cup. There was consternation all around and much breast-beating, but in the absence of any tangible evidence, the story fatigued.

The big breakthrough came accidentally in the year 2000 when the South African team was touring India. Keeping tabs on a known bookie Mukesh Gupta, the Delhi police stumbled on a telephone conversation between Hansie Cronje and bookmakers on how to rig matches.

Overnight, the fabric of the sport had been sensationally torn asunder. Cronje was not only captain of South Africa, but arguably the most respected cricketer in the world. Cricket was shaken to its core.

The scandal was to multiply manifold some weeks later when Cronje, appearing before the Kings Commission back home, admitted to fixing matches and revealed that he had been introduced to Gupta by Mohammed Azharuddin, a former captain and like him one of the most admired players in the game.

There was more to come when Manoj Prabhakar, in a sting operation for Tehelka, alleged that he had been offered money by Kapil Dev to tailor his performance in a match. That charge never stuck. Indeed, Prabhakar himself was found guilty of match-fixing subsequently and was punished by the BCCI.

In circa 2000, several players’s reputation was tarnished, though for lack of evidence or initiative, most of them were let off. The three most adversely affected were Cronje, who was to die in a plane crash, Salim Malik the Pakistan captain who got a life ban (since revoked in 2008) and Azhar, who faced a series of inquiries by the CBI and the BCCI and was also given a life ban that was set aside last week.

But while the Andhra Pradesh High Court will have given the former India captain massive relief, it cannot obscure the fact that match-fixing is for real, and was perhaps raging during the late 1990s.

The AP High Court found evidence against Azhar ‘unsustainable’ and termed the life ban imposed on him by the BCCI as ‘illegal’. Azhar says this vindicates his stand that he had been wrongly tainted.

“My conscience was always clear as I did nothing illegal right through my career,” he said after the High Court order.

Justice Krishna Mohan Reddy however also said that the “non-proving of the allegations does not amount to whether guilty or not of the charges whereas it only amounts to non-proving of the charges.”

In effect, Justice Reddy admonishes the BCCI for its laxity in establishing charges.

In any efficient legal system the tenet of being “innocent till proved guilty” is paramount, and justice Krishna Mohan Reddy found that the BCCI’s case was weak — if at all it was true. For 11-long years, Azhar has resiliently denied any wrongdoing and fought the court battles with deep patience and resolve, in between even contesting and winning a seat to the Lok Sabha by a wide margin.

One reckons though that he will need even more of these attributes to regain his pristine position in Indian cricket and the sport. Whether the BCCI goes in for appeal to the Supreme Court or chooses to admit him back into the fold could determine this more substantially.

Whether Azhar has got the benefit of doubt or has got justice, however delayed, will undoubtedly occupy historians and investigative journalists for time to come. But looking beyond this particular case, it is also important to understand why match-fixing was so widespread in the 1990s, and why the lessons from that time may still not been learnt.

Match or spot fixing has existed in cricket ever since its inception. The frailty of human nature has been known to knock down the virtues of idealism and righteousness that exist alongside. That is the human condition.

Sustained and big-time corruption, however, it is believed, swept cricket in the 1990s with the proliferation of one-day matches and tournaments — so many of them meaningless — that players thought nothing of rigging them.

By this time, the betting mafia was beginning to consolidate in Asia, and cricket, with it peculiar texture and rhythm which affords opportunities to wager at almost every step — and given the inherent lack of checks and balances — became easy prey.

The reason it went unchecked for so long, hindsight suggests, is because several players were sucked into it, many of them top-notchers. They found safety in numbers and their own clout till unchecked greed and callous disregard, as Cronje was to confess, caused it to go bust.

The scourge of match-fixing did not die then however. As was found out in the case of the three Pakistan cricketers — Salman Butt, Mohammed Asif and Mohammed Aamir in a Test match against England in 2010 — it had metamorphosed into the more sinister ‘spot-fixing’ avatar.

Indications are that the situation hasn’t improved dramatically even after these players were exposed. As in the 1990s, cricket currently, too, is experiencing a massive growth, more particularly with the arrival of T20 leagues and mega bucks.

The ICC chief executive Dave Richardson has admitted that “the monster of corruption” is the biggest challenge for the sport’s administrators.

My view is that apart from hard vigilance, mentoring programs must be instituted to teach young players about the dangers and evil of match-fixing. In the past, this approach was pooh-poohed as over-reaction. But we all know how far-reaching its ill-effects were.