Admirable as the work of the International Cricket Council's anti-gambling squad may be, the reported intention to expunge transgressors names from the record books is not one of the more illuminating suggestions.

It is to be hoped that other recommendations put before the ICC from Sir Paul Condon and his investigation team are more realistic than this foolhardy notion of retrospectively rewriting cricket history.

There is no doubt that physically chipping the players from their place among the all-time playing records would be a suitable punishment if cricket were a game for individuals.

It's not, and therein lies the fault in the suggested disincentive to future violators of the game.

Match-fixing has been a blight on cricket. It has gone against everything that cricket is supposed to represent.

Those found guilty of falling prey to the lures of Mammon deserve banishment.

But to remove those players' records from the game is impractical, unsuitable and nonsensical.

By all means insert an asterisk beside every reference to a player's name in the records forever marking him as having been proven by law to have besmirched the good name of cricket by accepting money for wrongful reasons.

Even that option is going to involve an awful lot of extra space taken up by asterisks.

To take a player's name out of the records is going to leave some pretty strange looking scorecards in the annals of the game's history.

What of the partnership records, or the dismissals where the offender has taken catches for a bowler?

And by eliminating a player from scoresheets does that suggest every game he has played in has been affected by match-fixing? Some of these players have more than 300 matches behind them. Has every one of them been affected?

Add that up by however many players have been implicated and there will be some pretty sorry looking statistics databases around the world.

The closest comparable example in baseball was the famous "throwing" of the 1919 World Series by the Chicago eight. Now known as the "Black Sox" because of their deeds.

When confronted with the evidence they confessed.

They were banned from baseball, but their records are still part of the statistical database of baseball. They were individuals competing in a team game.

What should be worth remembering by the ICC and Condon is that despite the confessions from the players concerned the Black Sox were acquitted by the courts.

Where the misery was compounded for the baseballers was that their involvement in the game was cut, and their ability to be included in halls of fame was also cut.

Debate still goes on in the United States about the absence of one of the eight, Shoeless Joe Jackson, from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

What was more pertinent, and is the same in cricket's case, are the words of Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Landis.

He proclaimed after the verdict acquitting the eight: "Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ball game, no player that entertains proposals or promises to throw a game, no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where they ways and means of throwing games are discussed, and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever again play professional baseball."

The game is the thing. Deny the miscreants their access to it and the punishment is done.

What is done cannot be undone.

The records should be left as a memorial to misdeeds and as an example of what can befall those who cross the line.

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