Spot-fixing, money, sleaze turn cricket an underground sport

Business Standard digs deep into the spot fixing allegations to bring you the complete story on corruption in Indian cricket

The corruption of cricket by the betting syndicate has shattered the faith of millions of followers of the game. The credibility of the Indian Premier League (IPL) matches is in peril, and there is no denying that cricketers will come under great pressure while performing. From now on, it will be tough for anyone who follows Twenty20 cricket to say with confidence if the contest in the middle is being conducted fairly or being played out according to a pre-determined script.

 

It’s too early to predict if anything will come of the allegations of so-called ‘spot-fixing’ against Indian speedster S Sreesanth and two of his Rajasthan Royals teammates. If found guilty, the trio could face jail terms of up to seven years and a life ban from cricket. Mediocre cricketers have previously been caught on camera in media stings discussing spot fixing and agreeing to rig their own performances in exchange for bookies' bribes. Sreesanth, however, is by far the biggest name to be implicated.

Graphics | The Three Arrested Royals

The Kerala pacer, 30, has played 27 Tests and 53 one-day internationals but injuries and disciplinary issues have kept him out of the India side since August 2011.

Spot fixing vs match fixing

Spot-fixing varies from total match-fixing in one crucial area - whereas match-fixing sees the whole result of a sporting contest manipulated, spot-fixing relates to specific incidents within the game. As such, it can take just one member of a team to enable a fix, rather than requiring the involvement of key players, making a con harder to detect as well as more cost-effective.

 

Spot-fixing first came to light in 2010 when tabloid News of the World exposé nailed three Pakistani players Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir to fix a Test match against England at Lord's. The International Cricket Council subsequently banned the trio for a minimum of five years.

Only pain no gain?

Session betting is one of the most common trends in the fixing of cricket matches. People place bets on runs made in a specific number of overs. Bookies then involve a few cricketers and ensure that a pre-decided score is reached. The return on investment for those who bet may range from 10-15% to 250%.

Mumbai police said that around Rs 400 crore had been betted on every IPL match this year. No legitimate business can match such lucrative returns: it is the flame which keeps the gambling/fixing fire burning.

No money changes hands until the end of a game. If the punter stands to gain he is given an address and told to collect his money from there. If the bookie has to collect, men land up at the punter's door.

Online betting

There are at least half-a-dozen websites offering 'best bets' on the IPL matches and that too in Indian currency. So much so that some of these websites are also running 24-hour online chat helpline to help those who are novices at betting. The website also proposes the names of online betting agencies such as William Hill, bet365, Ladbrokes and Betfair for placing bets. It also has a video on how to open an online account at one of the betting agencies.

To pre-empt possible legal hassles, the website clearly mentions how and why it facilitates online betting. Enforcement agencies point out that it is very difficult to do anything about betting websites hosted from the country where cricket betting is not illegal, even if it involves Indian bookies and punters.

Choppy waters

Over the years, India has become the new hub of the global cricket economy. Every new cricket initiative involves trying to monetise Indian passion. Young cricketers yearn after the easy money of IPL. British sports writer Ed Hawkins who wrote a thought-provoking book Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy  (Published by Bloomsbury) in which he mentioned that the Indian betting scene and warned BCCI and other stakeholders such as IPL team owners how deep the betting network has spread in Indian cricket.

Fuelled by sponsorships, broadcast revenue and ticket sales, the IPL has grown into the world’s richest cricket competition, worth $3.67 billion, according to London-based Brand Finance Plc. The sixth season of the IPL is currently under way in India.

The foreign hand?

In India, legal gambling is only limited to horse-racing, while casinos are allowed only in some states. However illegal syndicates continue to thrive and media estimated that Rs 5,000 crore was bet on the 2013 IPL Twenty20 competition so far. "There are overseas connections and we have proof that the underworld is involved," said Delhi Police commissioner Neeraj Kumar, adding, "the mastermind is sitting abroad" but declining to reveal details.

 

Media reports say a couple of bookies of the total seven arrested from Mumbai are allegedly linked to absconder mafia don Dawood Ibrahim, who is said to be in Pakistan. Dawood is believed to be a veteran in cricket betting and match fixing.

Sponsors

Rajasthan Royals sponsors involve huge names such as Ultratech Cement, Nissan and Tata Consultancy Services. Delhi-based Kent RO Systems, a first-time associate sponsor, featured Sreesanth and Rajasthan Royals captain Rahul Dravid in its water purification brand advertisements. The company has now decided to withdraw the advertisement. 

Real estate player Supertech reposed its faith on Rajasthan Royals, saying it would not review its sponsorship at this point. Title sponsor of the IPL, PepsiCo, remained optimistic and expressed confidence that the BCCI would take appropriate action.

Modus operandi

The modus operandi was: there was a pact between the bookies and a player that in a certain over, they will give away a minimum amount of runs.

The bookies also gave the players the directions. That they have to indicate they are ready to give away those runs. You rotate your watch or you put on your towel or you spend some time setting the field.

Why the mess?

The commercialisation of cricket may have done players a world of good but it also generated negative impacts as the hype surrounding the game drew undesirable elements. Televised cricket - complete with stump-cams, slow-motion action replays, cheer leaders, intricate data analysis and viewer-friendly expert commentary - became an unending soap opera. But the biggest beneficiaries of all these influences, which served to sustain and heighten viewer enthusiasm, were the betting syndicates.

 

And the arrests of Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan, Ajit Chandila and a group of bookies may just be the tip of the iceberg. The lack of transparency in the IPL did come to light a few years ago and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) predictably responded by pointing a finger at the man, Lalit Modi, whose brainchild the league was. But little was done to monitor the off-field activities of players, agents and punters.

Timeline | Match fixing

 

Feb 1995

Shane Warne and Mark Waugh were fined after they admit to having given pitch report and weather info to bookies on Australia's tour of Sri Lanka in 1994

 

May 2000

Former Pakistan skipper Salim Malik was banned for life by a judicial probe after three Australia players accuse him of offering them bribes to underperform in the tour of Sri Lanka in 1994.

 

Oct 2000

Former South Africa captain Hansie Cronje was banned for life after admitting to match-fixing and having contact with bookies. Cronje died in 2002 in a plane crash

 

South Africa opening batsman Herschelle Gibbs and the quickie Henry Williams were banned for six months after admitting to underperform in agreement with Cronje.

 

Dec 2000

Former Team India skipper Mohammad Azharuddin and the spinner Ajay Sharma were banned for life after an investigation found Azharuddin had contact with bookies and tried to manipulate results.

 

Former all-rounder Manoj Prabhakar was banned for five years for his alleged involvement in match-fixing. Prabhakar tried to implicate his teammates including Kapil Dev in the match-fixing controversy, but the move backfired as he was banned for his own alleged involvement

 

Former all-rounder Ajay Jadeja was banned for five years as he was alleged to have associated himself with bookmakers. The ban was later quashed by the Delhi High Court on January 27, 2003, making Jadeja eligible to play domestic and international cricket.

 

Aug 2004

Kenyan all-rounder Maurice Odumbe is banned for five years by the Kenyan Cricket Association for associating with bookmakers and accepting money from them

 

Nov 2004

Former New Zealand's captain, Stephen Fleming, claimed that he was offered £200,000 by an Indian sports promoter during the 1999 World Cup to join a match-fixing syndicate.

 

May 2008

West Indies batsman Marlon Samuels receives a two-year suspension for breaching cricket's code of conduct following an ICC investigation into his alleged links with a bookmaker

 

Aug 2009

The Australia team's management filed a report with the ICC's anti-corruption unit after one of their players said he was approached by a man suspected of links to illegal bookmaking, after Australia's defeat to England at Lord's

 

May 2010

Bangladesh cricketer, Shakib-Al-Hasan, confirmed he received an approach, believed to be in March 2008, from an unknown person who Shakib believed wanted him to manipulate the result of a one-day match against Ireland.

 

Nov 3, 2011

Pakistani cricketers, Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif, were banned by the ICC from all forms of cricket for terms of five to 10 years. Their agent, Mazheer Majeed, is jailed for two and a half years.

May 2012

 

In 2012, the BCCI banned T.P. Sudhindra for life and handed out varying degrees of punishments to four others — Shalabh Srivastava, Mohnish Mishra, Amit Yadav and Abhinav Bali — after a television channel’s sting operation revealed that the guilty five had agreed to improper deals in the IPL and other matches.