Byzantine world of cricket betting
Vikrant Gupta and V Krishnaswamy in New Delhi
When Hansie Cronje, or the Australians Mark Waugh and Shane Warne before him, tell us that they only “provided information and forecasts” and did not indulge in “match- fixing”, they fool only the naive. In fact, this “inside” information gives the bookie/punter a headstart, as he gets a peep into the team’s strategies to prepare his future moves.
Insiders say it requires as many as six to seven, maybe even eight players to “fix” a result, and then again it is fraught with dangers like information leaks and unpredictability in that not all players might be able to keep their side of the bargain. Or the middleman may not be able to swing it as precisely as promised. This is where the concept of side bets, sub-bets and spread bets is more useful.
Once a bookie has a captain in his pocket, half the battle is won. With his help, Cronje in this case, a bookie can bet on anything – from the toss right to the batting/bowling order and even composition of the team. The transcripts released so far do not have any reference of either side winning or losing a match.
So, what was the “fixing” all about? Simple. According to the transcript released, the South African captain was expected to ensure a certain kind of composition, bring in some irregular bowlers, and take “strange” decisions, which may look like tactics to an outsider, but are in actuality engineered by other considerations.
Side bets are bets with a rider – like team X will score less than 150 but win the match, meaning there are two components to the bet. One component is scoring less than 150 and the second is winning.
A sub-bet is like betting on specific players. Like an in-form batsman like Herschelle Gibbs scoring less than 20 (as the transcripts revealed and Gibbs was out for 19!). A bookie stands to make money because a punter could put money on Gibbs scoring more than 20 because of his good form, but behind the curtain a “deal” would have already been fixed.
The third and more complicated but rather popular form is a spread bet. Here the odds keep changing as the match progresses. If a team suddenly loses three or four wickets in quick succession, the odds on it winning the match become higher; likewise a long partnership in the middle of an innings shorten the odds.
In spread bets, only punters who have the confidence of the bookies – and hence allowed to place bets without putting money up front – enter the ring. At the end of each match, the difference is calculated – the profits the punter has made at various stages minus the losses he incurs at other stages. On a good day a punter could walk away with a packet, or lose a fortune. It is here that an insider bookie succeeds, specially if he has “privileged” information from influential players inside the team. He makes the odds attractive to lure the punter.
Other bets are also placed on composition of teams, or the toss – what a captain will do if he wins it. Bets are also placed on run-outs, and in Test matches, on declarations and follow-ons.
Another popular way of betting, which is largely individual – often there are no big bookies involved in it – is when two punters split players and bet.
For instance, in a match where there are 22 players, Bookie A chooses six players, three from either side. Bookie B does the same. The sum total of runs scored by either punters’ “team” is compared and the difference paid out depending on who “wins”. The same can be extended to wickets taken by bowlers. Disputes, if any, on who chooses which batsmen are sorted out before the match starts. Money changes hands at the rate of as high as R1E000, or even a lakh per difference of a run.
If, in a series, matches are closely fought, the amount of money per run or wicket becomes higher.