Illegal Sports Betting Worrisome

Betting trend is worrying for the ICC after bust by police in India
by: Peter Lalor
From: The Australian

AN illegal Indian bookmaking ring has been caught taking bets on Saturday night's Big Bash League semi-final in Perth.

A special police squad in Ahmedabad arrested four people, seized almost $100,000 in cash, three laptops, 19 mobile phones and two televisions in the raid.

The police said that a computer engineer had been using the computers to simultaneously track market movements and betting on the WACA match between the Perth Scorchers and Melbourne Stars. It was the biggest cash seizure for many years, but detectives said that illegal bookmakers rarely kept their money on the premises.

There is no suggestion the Big Bash League match was fixed but the raid highlights a trend that is worrying cricket's head body.

Chief executive of the ICC Haroon Lorgat told The Australian last week that anti-corruption measures around international cricket had forced a "displacement" that led illegal bookmakers and their fixers to turn their attention to domestic games that were not monitored by the ICC.

Former Essex cricketer Mervyn Westfield, 23, is facing sentencing in an English court after pleading guilty to accepting $9000 to bowl badly in the first over of a Pro40 Match against Durham in 2009.

The young bowler had spent the summers either side of the match in question playing for an Adelaide grade cricket club and attending the Darren Lehmann Cricket Academy.

The BBL match which the Indian bookmakers were targeting is a domestic match and does not fall under the gaze of the ICC's Anti Corruption and Security Unit, but Cricket Australia has set up a parallel process headed by Sean Carroll who was previously with the international body.

CA chief executive James Sutherland said when the new body was formed in November its job would be to monitor Shield, domestic one-day and Big Bash matches.

"There has been no evidence of problems in domestic cricket but we want to move proactively on the basis that vigilance and constant education is critical," he said.

CA spokesman Peter Young said last night that he expected Carroll would be investigating the bust in India.

It is claimed that more than $50 million is gambled illegally in India on every one-day match Australia plays -- considerably more is laid out on games involving the local side.

Westfield was arrested when his teammate, Tony Palladino, reported suspicions about his behaviour. The whistleblower said last week he did not think it was a one off incident.

"You'd be a fool to think spot-betting wasn't happening at Essex before, and at other counties. It must have been," Palladino told The Sun.

"They've chosen county cricket because it's not as high profile as international cricket.

"What worries me is there might be other cases that have been swept under the carpet. I've spoken to international players who've been approached several times in Asia. It's rife out there."

The Scorchers won Saturday night's match and in the process guaranteed themselves at least $700,000 by qualifying for the Champions League.

Spot fixing and black-market gambling has been a problem in cricket for two decades.

Three Pakistan players were jailed for spot fixing following a Test match in England last year.

Police said the bookmakers, who were working in the industrial centre of Kalol near Ahmedabad, had been operating for more than a year.

They arrested Kashyap Brahmbhatt, Mitesh Nayak, Kartik Khamar and Rakesh Soni in the raid.

"Brahmbhatt was taking bets on a county cricket match in Australia," a police spokesman told local reporters.

"Of those arrested, Brahmbhatt has a history of betting-related incidents. The three others were running his network.