As I understand it, cricket has to be televised live to be of interest to the betting syndicates, and as precious little County Championship stuff falls into this category I can't see it as a problem in that regard.
I don't know whether it will be better for you to keep your head in the clouds or look into the corruption in English domestic cricket.
Let me just say this - widespread live broadcast is the
only defence against illegal bookmakers, and by extension also a disincentive for match fixing or spot fixing. When matches are not broadcast live, illegal bookmakers will have stringers at the event reporting back to them (a few bookies' stringers got ejected from Wimbledon this year) so they can make a killing from offering bets which they know the punters can't win because they have more info than the punters. For example, if the first Test here was not broadcast (not just TV, also numerous radio stations and internet broadcasts including video, 'radio' and text commentary) you could have had dodgy bookies offering bets on the basis of "Michael Clarke is on 60* early on day two, odds of him getting a double century are..." while conveniently not mentioning he was battling a severe injury and that the match situation made it very unlikely.
This is the prime reason that Cricket Australia has had the Sheffield Shield broadcast on their website (for free) for the last few years, because they did it as a proactive step to keep the sport clean. The cost to them of operating their own broadcasts including cameras, production personnel and commentators is far less than the cost to the sport of further corruption scandals (e.g. sponsors bailing out, reduced attendance at matches, fewer government grants for development programs etc).
Different matter though about possible team collusion towards the end of a season re ultimate championship positions, given the considerable difference in prize money between first and third but whether this is 'corruption' or 'you scratch my back...' I wouldn't like to judge.
I would absolutely call this corruption.
The solution is simple - go fully professional like the major league sports in the USA and like Australian domestic cricket where the prize money is virtually (or even actually) non-existent - the teams in the Superbowl don't get anything more from the league than the teams which finish bottom in their divisions. County cricket is already a closed system (unlike, for example, the tiered league structure in English football) so it should be fairly simple to pay all the counties the same amount every year and leave further financial success up to the management of the county clubs to find sponsors and attract people to the ground to increase revenue from gate receipts and concession sales. If there has to be prize money involved, make it so trivially small as to not be an incentive or even just a non-financial prize of paid travel to an end of season awards dinner for the whole squad.
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IMHO, Alistair Cook should be replaced by Eoin Morgan as Captain of the ODI squad, but should he be in the ODI squad?
World Cup squads are 15 players, which for most countries would be their first-choice playing eleven, two spare bowlers, a spare wicketkeeper and a spare batsman (which could in theory be Cook).
Unless they are unquestionably indispensable as a player, former captains should be kept out of knife-fighting range if they can't be trusted to keep their fingers uncrossed when pledging allegiance to the new captain. And as we saw with Kevin Pietersen just 12 months ago, sometimes even the indispensable players can become liabilities.
Cook is not as indispensable as Pietersen was and probably still is, his batting and fielding is simply not as good as Pietersen's.
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And on the issue of captains and former captains and vice-captains, Steve Smith will lead Australia in the remainder of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy with Brad Haddin being the vice-captain.
That CA did not appoint Brad Haddin would suggest that they now know for sure that Michael Clarke is out with a long-term, and potentially a career-ending, injury rather than a short-term injury.
It will also be interesting to see what happens with the ODI team where George Bailey has been the stand-in captain for the matches missed by Clarke this year. He's doing an excellent job, so I'd say it would be best to leave him in the role with Haddin as the deputy and Smith in the side as just a batsman.
