Cricket 2.0

by Tim Wigmore

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  ‘It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people – with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe,’ Nick Carraway says in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, disbelieving of how the 1919 World Series was fixed.

  In the late 1990s, cricket was ‘exceedingly naive – naive, blind and short-sighted’ to the threat of corruption, said Ehsan Mani, who was president of the International Cricket Council from 2003 to 2006. Such illusions were shattered when a series of fixing scandals broke around the turn of the century, with South Africa’s captain Hansie Cronje, and a series of prominent Pakistani players, among those affected.

  During the mid 1990s, regarded as the modern golden age for cricket fixers, virtually all betting in cricket was concentrated on matches involving the nine nations who were permitted to play Test cricket. The simple reason was that very few other matches were televised internationally – and, without broadcasting coverage, there was a lack of funds in the betting markets. Without enough liquidity in the betting markets, corruptors couldn’t make enough cash for it to be worth their while getting players to fix.

  T20 changed this equation. It meant that the number of games with enough money bet on them to be worth fixing went from in the region of 150 a year, the total number of top-tier international fixtures each year in the late 1990s, to five times as many. In 2018, there were 719 T20 fixtures played worldwide. And the potential pool of players of interest to corruptors – barely into three figures in the late 1990s – was now 2,119, the number of cricketers who played any official T20 games in 2018. So there were about 15 times more players worth corrupting than 20 years earlier.

  Simple mathematics explained the burgeoning threat to cricket. ‘The amount of cricket being played now is phenomenal,’ the anti-corruption insider explained. ‘It’s the amount of opportunities that people have got.’ While the surge in interest in domestic cricket begat by T20 was celebrated, criminal gangs recognised the trend as a new business opportunity.

  The years ahead would show that domestic T20 matches did not merely share the same vulnerabilities that international games had long possessed. Instead, domestic T20 was even more susceptible to corruption. The historic lack of interest in domestic games meant that authorities were initially blasé to the threat of fixing – so matches were not policed as rigorously as the international game, which itself remained vulnerable. Player education about corruption was also less thorough at domestic level, with a solitary brief PowerPoint presentation at the start of seasons generally considered sufficient; players who arrived late often did not even have that. As the matches included players who were paid far less than in international games, getting players in on a fix was less expensive. Low-paid and insecure players, unsure of whether they would even get another contract, appearing with or against international players earning millions a year could also foment jealousy. It was not uncommon for players earning only a couple of thousand for a league season to play alongside players earning hundreds as much for the same work.

  And so for players who fix, taking money to underperform could be entirely rational, as the sports economist Stefan Szymanski wrote. ‘On the “selling” side, the players must balance the reward from fixing against the potential cost of being caught. This cost is the probability of being caught multiplied by the penalty for fixing.’

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  The first great fixing scandal to be exposed that was caused by the new T20 ecosystem allegedly began in a hotel room. In 2008, the former New Zealand international cricketer Lou Vincent was playing in the Indian Cricket League, a T20 league in the country that was launched before the IPL, but was never approved by the Indian board. Vincent would later claim that he received a phone call from someone claiming to be a cricket equipment manufacturer, inviting him to a hotel room. He went to the room, but found no equipment. The man offered a prostitute as ‘a gift’ – along with a huge wad of American dollars.

  This, Vincent would say, was the start of his involvement in match-fixing. In return for promises of US$50,000 per game, Vincent deliberately started underperforming. In the ICL, it was not uncommon for teams to move from odds of evens – suggesting a 50% chance of winning – to near 3/1 on (or 1/3) – suggesting a 75% chance – on betting exchanges for no apparent reason, suggesting a high degree of fixing.

  ‘I probably had a chip on my shoulder over my career. I left New Zealand pretty heartbroken and a bit angry at the system,’ Vincent later told New Zealand’s TV3. ‘And as the match-fixing world opened up to me . . . I thought, “Yeah, I’m going to make some big money now, so stuff the world.”’

  Until his career ended in 2013, Vincent was a fixer. The next year, he admitted to 18 charges of fixing and was banned for life. A teammate he claimed had encouraged him to fix – Chris Cairns, the captain of the Indian Cricket League franchise Vincent was playing for in 2008 – was acquitted after a bruising trial in London in 2015. Indeed, the lack of criminal convictions for fixing, partly explained by the difficulty of explaining the mechanics of fixing to a jury who do not understand the game, may heighten incentives to fix if players deduce that there is scant chance of being caught.

  Vincent’s claim that he initially thought that he was simply meeting a cricket equipment manufacturer was typical of how many corruption cases begin. Corruptors often approach players by befriending them in a manner that Ronnie Flanagan, the long-time chairman of the ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit, has likened to grooming. Players are approached by those claiming to be businessmen in bars or even over WhatsApp, and cultivated for several weeks.

  This can be done in a subtle way: for instance, by pretending to offer a clothing contract. Mohammad Ashraful, the former Bangladesh captain who was subsequently found guilty of fixing in the Bangladesh Premier League in 2013, originally got gifts to celebrate his successes. Fixers can befriend players – then feigning personal financial debts, they will ask a player to underperform in a one-off way as a favour. If the player agrees, corruptors can threaten to reveal their corruption if they do not oblige in future. Sometimes, criminal gangs use honeytraps; a player can then be blackmailed – with the gang threatening, say, to release images to his family – to be persuaded to fix. ‘They tend to hunt the bars for you,’ Chris Gayle wrote in Six Machine. ‘You’ve got to be careful out there.’

  When he began fixing, Vincent played for the Chandigarh Lions, and then the ICL World XI, in the Indian Cricket League, an unofficial T20 tournament which was not sanctioned by the Indian cricket board. With pop-up teams created in new leagues, there was no semblance of player loyalty. While players had shown themselves willing to fix international cricket too, temptations were sharpened in franchise cricket. Players regularly appeared for five or more teams a year; the whole relationship between a player and their side could easily be reduced to the transactional.

  ‘It’s a very strange environment when you turn up a day or so before the first game – play, golf, play, occasional beers and then at the end you leave 12 hours later,’ said Jim Allenby, who played for Peshawar Zalmi in the Pakistan Super League in 2016. He said that such a dynamic had ‘no real team aspect or build-up so it’s hard to encourage guys to play as a team’, and this could make it ‘easier to convince [players] to fix’.

  ‘There are so many more people around the team and around the hotel,’ said Allenby, who noticed a notable change when he played in the 2016 PSL, his first T20 franchise league aged 33. ‘It’s very hard to protect players in those environments. It’s hard to say for sure but some strange guys will come up to you in the bar late and start chatting and asking questions but we would just try and move away so it never went further.’ Younger players may not have found it as easy to close down what may have started out as a harmless chat.

  For corruptors, the beauty of the fix is that getting one player, once, is enough to get them forever. A player who has fixed once can then be blackmailed: should they refuse to be involved in fixe
s again, then the gang say they will leak details of the fix, or threaten the player more directly. ‘Some of it starts very young . . . If I get you as a 19-year-old I’ve hooked you up,’ said the anti-corruption insider. ‘If I’ve recruited you I’m going to use you whenever I can.’

  One-time fixers could effectively be trapped in perpetuity. Ruthless gangs moved to target players ever-younger, including in U-19 tournaments. A fix in one of these tournaments, which might have seemed relatively innocuous – a player could be enlisted to bowl a single no-ball, not for the fixers to make money off but simply as a way of blackmailing the player subsequently – could put the player on to the path of fixing for life.

  Fixers using youth competitions as a way of recruiting players highlighted the importance of player education. But standards of education varied hugely around the world, meaning that gangs could pick off teams who offered the greatest likelihood of succumbing when their players were young. Such historic differences in player education are one reason for amnesties, such as for those in Sri Lankan cricket in 2019 – which allowed personnel to report their involvement in corruption without being reprimanded – could help protect the sport from future corruption.

  Corruptors did not need to fix a match to enrich themselves; instead, they often merely needed to corrupt one player to make a profit. By knowing that one player was going to underperform in a certain way – either that a bowler would concede a large number of runs, or that a batsman would get out early or score much slower than required (preferably both) – corruptors could bet against this particular team before the period of deliberate underperformance. Then they could bet on the team after their period of deliberate underperformance, meaning that they traded themselves into a position when they could make money on the match market regardless of the actual final result. So players could be paid to fix, but their team would still be able to win without affecting corruptors’ profits.

  On Indian websites, so-called ‘white label’ sites offer a way for gamblers to bet, including on run brackets. Here, gamblers can bet on how many runs will be scored in segments of a T20 game – typically the six-over Powerplay, the seventh to the tenth overs, the eleventh to the fifteenth overs, and then the final five overs. As such, overs at the end of a ‘bracket’ are regarded as the most susceptible to fixing – as a bowler bowling, say, the tenth over would be able to determine whether the second five-over bracket reached a certain number in that bracket, if necessary by bowling wides and no-balls or bowling poor balls that can be easily hit for boundaries. Bringing fine leg up, and then bowling on a batsman’s leg stump, meaning a batsmen can easily guide the ball past the fielder, is regarded as a classic way of ensuring a batsman scores the runs required by the fix. Batsmen, conversely, can bat slowly to ensure that their team scores under a certain amount in a bracket.

  Signals that are known to be used include batsmen changing gloves, taking their helmets off and putting them back on or retaking their guard. For bowlers, aborting their run-up or starting their over with a wide are both known to act as signals. ‘Spotters’ in the ground then contact the gamblers to confirm that a fix is on.

  Yet the vast majority of liquidity in most betting markets remains concentrated on the most common bets. Who will win a match accounts for 96% of betting on T20 games on Betfair, a leading online betting exchange.

  But corruptors might only need one player to make a profit. Vincent, for instance, would often score deliberately slowly at the start of his innings. So those who had paid him could back against his team before he began his innings, and then watch their odds lengthen, due to Vincent’s slow scoring. The fixers could then back Vincent’s team to win at longer odds, meaning they had manipulated themselves into a position where they were guaranteed a profit, regardless of who actually won. In this way, the internet was a boon for fixers the world over, enabling them to manipulate the odds in a way that could make thousands in a few minutes – an altogether easier process than fixing in the pre-internet age, when fixers might need to buy off most of a team to be sure of making a profit. This changing dynamic also created the image of fixing as a victimless crime. An opening batsman, say, could agree to play out a maiden in the first over of an innings – which would mean their side’s odds would lengthen significantly – but still score a century and help his team win.

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  Gurunath Meiyappan was rather endearingly viewed as akin to a lucky mascot for Chennai Super Kings. The son-in-law of N. Srinivasan, the owner of the team and president of the BCCI at the time, and a cricket fanatic, Meiyappan was appointed as team principal. It was essentially an invented role of the ilk that became common in the IPL, designed to give those who were powerful enough a legitimate reason to be involved with the team.

  As team principal, Meiyappan had the right to go to team meetings, and access to some of the most sensitive information about the inner workings of the team, like injuries and team selection. Meiyappan even had ‘team owner’ credentials, allowing him full access to IPL venues, and to attend IPL auctions on Chennai’s table. He was living every fan’s dream.

  Only, Meiyappan was not just a fan. He was also a gambler. In 2013, the Mumbai police arrested Meiyappan on account of gambling on matches involving Chennai, benefiting from information he was privy to in his role as team principal. He was also found to have passed on sensitive information to illegal bookmakers.

  Meiyappan would be banned for life from cricket. So, at exactly the same time was Rajasthan Royals’ part-owner Raj Kundra, who also bet on matches involving his team. As a result, Chennai and Rajasthan were suspended for two years from the IPL, missing the 2016 and 2017 seasons.

  These affairs were a window into how, for corruptors, players were just one of their potential partners. In franchise T20 leagues, corruptors could go right to the very top. Indeed, sometimes those at the top were the corruptors. The structure of T20 leagues more broadly may embolden such nefarious behaviour: with no promotion and relegation, teams in leagues are insulated from being punished for underperformance.

  Senior officials in teams could abuse their positions to enrich themselves at the expense of their team. In 2014, the managing director of the Dhaka Gladiators was found to have attempted to fix a match.

  Insiders believed that some owners bought teams in T20 leagues simply as a vehicle to make money through corruption. By getting a team to underperform – through poor recruitment and team selection, simply bribing their own players to lose, or saying that they needed to underperform in a solitary game to regain their contracts for the next season – owners could gamble against their own sides, and make money that far exceeded the extra prize money they missed out on by losing.

  There was also scope for owners to use privileged information – like if a star player was injured – to be able to bet against their team and then, when news of the injury was revealed, back their team, meaning they had manipulated the market in a way that guaranteed a profit.

  The appeal of such malfeasance could be explained by the economic situation in leagues. The IPL’s $510 million a year TV deal, which began from the 2018 season, moved teams decisively into profitability, meaning those running the franchises had no need to make up the shortfall in alternative ways.

  But in most leagues, it was commonplace for teams to lose money. Owners thus had to recoup their investment any way they could, nefarious or otherwise. This created the incentive for them to want to fix. And the nature of anti-corruption work in leagues, which did not have an equivalent of English football’s fit-and-proper-person test for owners, created opportunity.

  ‘Some of these owners are dodgy as fuck,’ observed one player who played in multiple T20 World Cups.

  The economics of leagues also impacted on players’ incentives to fix. In several leagues – notably the early years of the Bangladesh Premier League – players were routinely paid extremely late. Aggrieved and with a financial shortfall, players in such situations could be more vulnerable to fixing.


  While Mumbai police were charging Meiyappan, they were also investigating Asad Rauf, a widely respected umpire who was a member of the ICC Elite Umpire Panel. In 2016, Rauf was banned for five years by the Indian board on charges of corruption and misconduct. During his stint in the Indian Premier League, Rauf allegedly received gifts from corruptors, for which he is alleged to have passed on information, like about the pitch or ground conditions.

  Ample scope existed for match officials to impact results in return for cash. Most T20 leagues were slow to embrace the Decision Review System (DRS), allowing players to review decisions made by the on-field umpires, giving umpires the ability to influence results. Even if DRS was used, teams were only allowed one review per innings each, and borderline calls stayed with the on-field umpire after review. Match referees, who imposed disciplinary bans on players, could also be of interest to corruptors. If they knew that a star player was about to be banned for a period, that would impact the match and tournament odds.

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  While greater attention is being placed on policing the pinnacle of the sport, the fear is that the threat may merely have been displaced. Even T20 leagues regarded as second tier now attract far more cash on betting markets than Test matches. On the UK betting exchange Betfair in 2018, an average of £6.5 million was matched for each Test, compared with £52 million for each IPL game. Even more strikingly, £34.8 million was matched on each Afghan Premier League game – two-thirds as much as each IPL match, and over five times as much as each Test. In some matches in the Tamil Nadu Premier League, a regional T20 league in India, which doesn’t even have official T20 status, over £30 million would be matched on Betfair alone.

  Such figures are only a small proportion – reckoned to be under 5% – of the total amount bet on each game, meaning that some Afghan Premier League matches could be expected to have over £600 million matched on them worldwide, largely through illegal bookmakers based in India and east Asia. Only a tiny proportion of this £600 million could be traced reliably. Fixing in the Afghan Premier League (APL) was ‘rife’, said one prominent figure in Afghan cricket in 2019.