New Zealand cricketer Lou Vincent photographed on August 30, 2001.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

Former New Zealand batter Lou Vincent has opened up on how he was drawn to the world of match-fixing during his time at the now defunct Indian Cricket League in the late 2000s, saying being part of a gang at that time gave him a sense of belonging as he battled depression.

Vincent, who represented New Zealand in 23 Tests and 108 ODI, was handed 11 life bans by the England and Wales Cricket Board in 2014 for match-fixing. Last year, the ban was revised allowing him to be involved in domestic cricket.

The 46-year-old had started his career with a Test hundred on debut against the mighty Australian side of 2000s. As he fought depression and got involved in match-fixing, his promising international career came to a premature end at the age of 29.

In an interview with the The Telegraph’ Vincent narrated how his early upbringing impacted his personality and career.

“So I didn’t have the mental package to be a professional sports player. So at 28 I was deeply in depression and then went to India, and was dragged, sucked into that fixing world. It was pretty easy to see how it happened,” a candid Vincent admitted.

“I felt like I was part of a gang. It almost made me feel better, because I am thinking: ‘I am part of a match-fixing gang, I am with a group that’s going to have my back and nobody knows our little secret.’ “I think that’s how most bike gangs work with young kids. Yeah, they sort of groom young kids into ‘we’ll look after you but go drive that car through the shop and smash it up’.” Having grown up in a dysfunctional family, Vincent was always looking for emotional support around him and he ended up finding that in the murky world of corruption. He is currently involved in the anti-corruption education initiatives of New Zealand players’ body.

“I literally raised myself from the age of 12, so I was always quite malleable to people around me. Because I wanted to be loved, you’re easily led astray,” he conceded.

“And, you know, that contributed massively towards my professional career of just wanting to be liked, wanting to be loved, and sort of sharing how I was feeling on tour.

“If I was a little bit homesick or not scoring enough runs, I would tell the coach, the captain and then all of a sudden you get dropped because they think he’s not going to give 100 per cent for New Zealand tomorrow, because he’s a little bit lonely,” he said.

However, it did not take long for Vincent to realise the dangers of being part of the “gang”.

“When you’re in that world, it’s hard to get out. There’s always a very underlying threat of ‘we know you, we know your kids’. You know, there’s never a direct threat. But they make it very clear that they’re involved with some pretty heavy underground gangs.

“And, ‘you owe us, and you always will owe us’. Even if you’ve completed the fixing, they own you. It’s hard to get out, and the only way to get out was literally the way I did (confess),” added Vincent, who scored six hundreds across formats in his six-year international career.

A decade after he was banned by the ECB, Vincent has healed and made peace with his pasrt.

“Coming clean and approaching the players’ association and telling them what was happening, ‘where do we go from here?’, was the start of turning it around. The ECB were great to deal with.

“It’s taken a good decade but you can’t rush healing. It is still a daily check sometimes. But those moments of going down are very short now instead of it being hours or days or weeks,” he said.