India's IPL hit by govt's 'gambling and betting' slur

India's IPL hit by govt's 'gambling and betting' slur

NEW DELHI (AFP) - Indian Premier League chiefs were Sunday defending themselves against government charges that the lucrative Twenty20 event in South Africa was “encouraging gambling and betting.”Sports minister Manohar Singh Gill lashed out at an IPL mobile phone SMS contest in which participants win cash prizes for correctly guessing the sequence of runs scored in the subsequent over of the match.
“I see the commercial use of cricket for business gains that is going on,” Gill, a former federal chief election commissioner, said in a statement.
“I am concerned about the latest venture of encouraging viewers to make ball-by-ball predictions of runs scored for economic gain in the shape of cash prizes.
“This is viewed as openly encouraging gambling and betting which official bodies do not resort to, even in countries where betting is legal -- all this to make money and enlarge their TV viewership base.”
The IPL, already plagued by dwindling viewership across India after the tournament was shifted to South Africa for security reasons, downplayed the sports minister's charges.
“A lot of effort has gone into this concept (SMS contest) and into making this possible,” IPL commissioner Lalit Modi was quoted as saying in South Africa by the Times of India.
“It's a valid point (made by Gill). But the margin of something like that happening is one in a million. If this game works, fine. If not, then we will leave it aside.”
http://www.dailymirror.lk/DM_BLOG/Sections/frmNewsDetailView.aspx?ARTID=48544

That was a tip of the Iceberg.
This is the rest of the iceberg.


It is unbelievable... but is it true?
In organized sports, match fixing or game fixing occurs when a match is played to a completely or partially pre-determined result. Where the sporting competition in question is a race then the incident is referred to as race fixing. Games that are deliberately lost are sometimes called thrown games. When a team intentionally loses a game to obtain a perceived future competitive advantage rather than gamblers being involved, the team is often said to have tanked the game instead of having thrown it. In pool hustling, tanking is known as dumping.
Thrown games, when motivated by gambling, require contacts (and normally money transfers) between gamblers, players, team officials, and/or referees. These contacts and transfer can sometimes be found, and lead to prosecution, by law or by the sports league(s). In contrast, tanking is internal to the team and very hard to prove. Often, substitutions made by the coach designed to deliberately increase the team's chances of losing (frequently by having one or more key players sit out, often using minimal or phantom injuries as a public excuse for doing this), rather than ordering the players actually on the field to intentionally underperform, were cited as the main factor in cases where tanking has been alleged.
Cricket has been scandalized by several gambling and match fixing allegations in recent years, culminating in the World Cup investigations of 2007. These highly publicised enquiries were prompted by the surprise defeat of Pakistan in the Cup by Ireland and the subsequent murder investigation into the sudden death, straight after the match, of Pakistan's head coach Bob Woolmer. Cricket match-fixing and the fallout of the Woolmer case have since become the subject of crime/thriller literature in the novel 'Raffles and the Match-Fixing Syndicate' (2008) by Adam Corres.
In 2000 the Delhi police intercepted a conversation between a blacklisted bookie and the South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje in which they learnt that Cronje accepted money to throw matches. The South African government refused to allow any of its players to face the Indian investigation unit, which opened up a can of worms. A court of inquiry was set up and Cronje admitted to throwing matches. He was immediately banned from all cricket. He also named Salim Malik (Pakistan), Mohammed Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja (India). Jadeja was banned for 4 years. They too were banned from all cricket. As a kingpin, Cronje exposed the dark side of betting, however with his untimely death in 2002 most of his sources also have escaped law enforcement agencies. Two South African cricketers, Herschelle Gibbs and Nicky Boje, are also wanted by the Delhi police for their role in the match fixing saga. A few years before in 1998, Australian players Mark Waugh and Shane Warne were fined for revealing information about the 'weather' to a bookmaker.

Reed the Complete article.

Saleem Parvez S/o Ghulam Muhyuddin(Recorded on 24th October, 1998)

I went to Sri Lanka when Pakistan was playing in the Singer Cup (in 1994). I stayed for one month, for some days in the same hotel where the team was. Most of the matches played by Pakistan and other teams are fixed. In this activity, Salim Malik and Mushtaq Ahmed are the leaders and they at the appropriate time involve other players also. Once I overheard Salim Malik and Mushtaq talking about having a match fixed. I overheard them saying they have to lose their match. This conversation took place in the hotel corridor. I went to Sri Lanka at Mushtaq's insistence who said I should come to Sri Lanka so as to see some matches and maybe something comes out of it. These players have been indulging in match-fixing even before that but not in my presence. Mushtaq and Salim Malik had received $100,000 from me on behalf of someone for fixing the match in Sri Lanka. The amount was paid so that Pakistan should lose the match, which they did lose. It was a match against Australia. Intikhab Alam is also involved in this match-fixing. He has remained manager of Pakistan and has put up two factories here. In my view matches in South Africa and Zimbabwe were also fixed. So was the quarter-final in Bangalore as I think that Ijaz Ahmed deliberately got out while playing rash. I acted on behalf of my friends whose names I can't disclose for security reasons. They are not book-makers but one of their friends is. I carried $100,000 with me. I had taken this money to Sri Lanka as I knew the team is going to sell the matches to Kerry Packer or to Bakhatar and therefore, I thought that why I should not try. I handed over the dollars to both of them who were together in their hotel room. The two players had contacted me directly in this connection. They had asked for a larger amount but I told them I have only $100,000.

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