The rise of powerful Indian gambling syndicates has led to some of the game’s biggest stars being ensnared in match- fixing claims. A special report by Jason Burke in Bombay, Denis Campbell and Kevin Mitchell
The five men from Bombay sweated nervously as their plane passed over the Arabian Sea en route to Dubai. They did not relish the task ahead: pleading for mercy from one of the most merciless figures in the violent and lucrative vortex of Asian sports betting. Dawood Ibrahim, godfather of a criminal underworld whose corruption threatens to destroy the integrity of cricket worldwide, was not going to like what his associates had to say.
The five bookmakers explained the problem to Dawood, the man nicknamed “Dubai Don”. He had been out-bribed in his attempt to profit from the triangular Champions Cup tournament in the desert state of Sharjah between India, Pakistan and England.
He had backed Pakistan to win all four of their games. But a rival consortium had paid key players so that Pakistan would win their first two matches, then lose the others. Dawood and his associates stood to lose millions of rands.
“Cancel the bets,” Dawood barked. His visitors looked crestfallen. They told him that if they did their reputations would be ruined and they would go bankrupt. This was last April, and the Cricket World Cup – an opportunity to earn serious money, they argued – was starting a month later in England. But Dawood barely listened.
“Do it or die,” he insisted. The vio- lence of Dawood’s gang, known as D Company, is notorious. Hours later hundreds of thousands of bets were suddenly cancelled.
The incident, recounted for the first time, illustrates the power of the men who run a racket that starts with poor punters waging small sums in backstreet gambling dens across Asia, ends with big-name cricketers throwing matches for cash, and makes fortunes for those with the right information and right contacts. Dawood has plenty of both.
He is typical of the bookies whose match- fixing is scarring cricket, a sport supposedly synonymous with fair play. The authorities in his native India have been trying for years to extradite him over his alleged role in bombings, the heroin trade, extortion of the rich and famous – and bribery in sport.
Dawood (44) fled to Dubai in 1987 to escape the attention of the Bombay police after a courtroom shoot-out left a rival gangster dead. Despite all that, he lives openly in Dubai, travels freely, throws lavish parties and has high-level political connections in Pakistan. Crucially, he also controls a network of bookies and has links with some of the world’s best-known cricketers. Like other South Asian betting kingpins, he operates with virtual impunity.
His native city of Bombay is the centre of South Asian betting and the match-fixing that increasingly accompanies it. India’s billion-strong population, Asia’s obsession with gambling and the recent spread of satellite television and cellphones have fuelled a boom in betting.
In Thailand and Malaysia they gamble on football, in the Middle East it is often horse racing, but in India and Pakistan cricket is a religion.
There are about 300 bookies in Lahore, double that number in Karachi, Calcutta and Delhi, and thousands in Bombay. Between them they handle tens of millions of rands every week.
The rewards are enormous for bookies who get the odds right. The biggest operators try to steal a march on their rivals by having cricket insiders – players, officials, journalists – on their payroll to give them information. There are rumours that even some umpires are involved.
Pradeep Magazine, a veteran Indian cricket journalist, has just published a book detailing how he was approached by a Delhi bookmaker during India’s tour of the West Indies in 1997 and offered R600 000 to introduce him to Sachin Tendulkar and Mohammed Azharuddin, two key players, with a view to fixing matches. There is no suggestion that either player knew anything about this approach. But India’s cricket board dismissed his account as “a figment of somebody’s lurid imagination”.
The biggest operators try to steal a march on their rivals by having cricket insiders on their payroll to give them information
It is not unusual for a bookie to spend up to R20-million trying to influence the result of a match, or series of matches, which might net him R100-million. Police in Bombay admit bookies in their city turn over about R60-million during a single match.
While cricket’s authorities routinely deny games are fixed, the truth is that corruption is rife. Cricketers talk about it freely off the record, but, when asked to give evidence, have even withdrawn sworn affidavits at the last minute.
Attempts by governments, law and order agencies and cricket itself to cut out a cancer eating away at the credibility of the ultimate gentleman’s sport have proved fruitless.
As bribery is left unchecked, cricket’s reputation becomes more tarnished by the day. South Asia’s bookies live in large houses, drive imported cars and eat in five-star hotels. They have connections with important government figures and sports administrators. Many are part of the lite and rub shoulders with members of the business and political establishment.
Connections to players are highly prized. The brother of Wasim Akram, the Pakistan captain recently cleared of match-fixing, is a bookmaker; he is very successful. But he is an exception. Most bookies have to rely on hard cash for their player contacts.
Raja Sahib, a Lahore bookie, has his office above a snooker hall in the exclusive residential area of Gulberg. In it are comfortable chairs, television sets and bottles of Johnnie Walker Black Label. On his desk are rows of telephones. The most important of them connect him to Bombay and Karachi and to another bookie, the father-in-law of a powerful politician, to whom he passes bets so large that he cannot handle them on his own.
Senior Inspector Inmadar of Bombay police’s special unit targeting bookies likens sports betting to a huge pyramid. “At the bottom you have a vast number of people betting a vast sum of money. At the apex you have very few people and a vast sum,” he says.
Dawood’s base in Dubai is an ideal place from which to influence the countless games that take place in neighbouring Sharjah, a kind of Monaco of the Middle East. It stages a large number of insignificant “noddy games” – matches meaningless in sporting terms, but highly valuable to television – which often attract the bookies’ attention.
Test matches, meanwhile, remain largely “clean” – thanks to a combination of the players’ honour and the difficulty in rigging a game played over five days rather than one.
Questions were asked after the Champions Cup was staged in Sharjah in April this year. Pakistan won their opening fixtures against India and England, then lost their second games against both opponents. The manner of their collapse against England – losing their last five wickets for six runs – immediately made ex- Pakistan captain Rashid Latif cry foul. “I suspect match- fixing,” he said. “The way they lost the match, it’s obvious something fishy has again started in the team.”
Rashid’s claim is endorsed by a Pakistani government investigator, who told The Observer: “Some of our players made money in Sharjah, but the chapter is closed.”
These games comprise about 70% of all international cricket. Their rise helps explain why players will sometimes accept money to perform badly and help a bookie make a killing. The less important the competition, the greater the potential for crookedness.
Like the powers that be in football and tennis, cricket’s rulers keep on organising matches and competitions that are little more than exhibition games, many played in countries where bookmaking flourishes under the guise of “developing the sport”. Another Sharjah tournament starts on October 13, featuring the West Indies, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
“Players have very little interest in playing in these manufactured tournaments, which don’t matter and have no inherent place in the programme of international cricket,” explains one cricket insider. “They see TV companies, promoters and cricket boards making money out of their efforts in these games, which have basically been created as moneymaking enterprises, so it’s no surprise that some players will take the opportunity to make cash themselves.”
The authorities need to take drastic action if cricket’s image is not to be further tarnished. So far, their response has been lacklustre. Every inquiry has led to a whitewash; every crackdown has achieved little.
In July, police in Lahore announced a major purge of illegal bookmakers; only four people were arrested, and all were later released.
In Australia, when Shane Warne and Mark Waugh took money from an Indian bookie in 1994 for providing seemingly innocuous “pitch and weather information”, the country’s cricket authorities hushed up the incident. They kept it quiet until last year – by which time the officials responsible for the cover-up had left office.
In South Asia, the inaction is attributable to the close links between the bookies, politicians, legal figures and cricket administrators, the petty corruption of local police forces, and a complete lack of political will to tackle a problem whose tentacles reach far into Indian and Pakistani society.
The International Cricket Council (ICC), the game’s ruling body, began its own inquiry in January. Nine months on, it is still working on “several items”, but has revealed and decided nothing.
The ICC chair, Jagmohan Dalmiya, is remembered in India for having swept claims of match-fixing under the carpet when he was secretary of the cricket board there.
Now Scotland Yard is closing in. A newspaper last week named Indian sports promoter Ashim Kheterpal as the “Mr Big” who it says offered former England player Chris Lewis about R3-million – and was prepared to offer current Test players Alec Stewart and Alan Mullally R3-million each – with a view to fixing a match against New Zealand last summer. Lewis contacted English Cricket Board officials as soon as the offer was made to him.
Detectives will fly to India within the next few weeks to interview Kheterpal. Scotland Yard said: “All members of the England team will be spoken to during this investigation.”
Lewis says the offer made to him was “a bribe wrapped up as a business proposition”. There will doubtless be much business done in Sharjah again in two weeks’ time.