The recent resurface of spot-fixing in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament is all shocking, if not surprising - considering its relevance in the last decade or so. Over and over again, cases of match fixing has taken the toll of this game with increasing vulnerability that certainly goes against the spirit of this gentleman’s game.
This year’s IPL tournament was all in track with no such controversies until 16th May, Thursday, when three players of Rajasthan Royals were arrested by Delhi Police on their alleged involvement of spot fixing. These players: Ankeet Chavan, Ajit Chandila and S. Sreesanth are now under police custody and it’s been reported that some of them have admitted their wrong doings.
Sadly, this is not the first time any such cases have been reported in IPL or in international cricket. Here is a look at some of the high-profile match fixing cases in the history of cricket.
Hansie Cronje - The then South African captain Hansie Cronje was one of the finest cricketers with all-round ability and for whom Sachin Tendulkar had once said that he is the toughest bowler to bat against. He, however, was the first to be picked up on match fixing charges in the year 2000, which he later admitted.
Cronje was arrested with teammates Herschelle Gibbs, Nicky Boje and Pieter Styrdom of fixing matches. The former South African captain had confessed his monetary involvement with bookies for forecasting matches. He was banned for life by the national cricket board of his country.
Mohammad Azharuddin: The former Indian captain was the first in Indian cricket to have declared guilty by the BCCI. Even today, Azhar is considered among the most successful captains of Indian cricket. However, his popularity as a cricketer was cut short soon after Hansie Cronje’s confession, which named the Indian captain as the one who introduced Cronje to bookmakers.
Eventually a special CBI enquiry found him guilty and the cricket board banned him for life only to lift it in 2006. The International Cricket Council (ICC), however, doesn’t consider this revoke of ban. In the most recent development, the life ban was overturned in 2012 by the Andhra Pradesh High Court.
Manoj Prabhakar: Prabhkar, who retired from Indian cricket soon after the 1996 Cricket World Cup, participated in a Tehelka match-fixing expose and tried to link cricketers like Azharuddin and Kapil Dev into match fixing. But the investigation took turn and he was found guilty of fixing matches. He was later banned for five years by BCCI.
Marlon Samuels: This West Indian player is currently playing for his national team after a two-year ban following his involvement in a 2008 match fixing case. Yet again, it was Indian police who accused Samuels of leaking team information to bookies before the first ODI match during the 2007 West Indies tour to India.
After scrutinizing few tapped telephonic conversations, the ICC enforced a two-year ban on the player. Interestingly, on April this year he was named one of the Wisden cricketers of the year and now playing for Pune Warriors India in the ongoing IPL tournament.
Butt, Asif and Amir: Three young yet well-known Pakistani cricket players: Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir were found guilty after a sting operation, which proved that all of them were involved in fixing a match against England in August 2010. They were convicted by a UK court in November, 2011 for cheating and conspiracy. They were banned for different periods after bowling planned no-balls against a match against England.
2012 IPL spot-fixing: In the history of IPL, the 2012 spot-fixing and underhand payment case is the first to come to the fore after a television sting operation named five players involved in spot-fixing.
All these five players were: TP Sudhindra of Deccan Chargers, Mohnish Mishra of Pune Warriors, Amit Yadav and Shalabh Srivastava of Kings XI Punjab and Abhinav Bali of Delhi. Sudhindra was banned for life and Srivastava for five years, while Mishra, Yadav and Bali were banned for one year each.
Besides, there are few more cases which involved names like Saleem Malik of Pakistan, Ajay Sharma and Ajay Jadeja of India, Maurice Odumbe of Kenya, Danish Kaneria of Pakistan, Mervyn Westfield of England and Shariful Haque of Bangladesh. In some of these cases, the imposed bans were later revoked by the respective cricket board.
Nevertheless, in the recent times match fixing and spot-fixing have always been in cricket and the modern fast-paced cricket events like the T20 IPL cricket tournament, the richest cricket tournament in the world, is in the eye of illegal betting industry for quick and result-oriented cricket matches.
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