Cricket Betting Scams
There have always been suspicions that some players or even whole teams have rigged cricket games in the past. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago we saw the pathetic sight of David Warner the Australian cricketer sobbing on television after being caught ball tampering.
Whether or not that was simply to win games or whether there had been bets placed on those matches as part of a much larger cricket betting scam does remain to be seen. However, there have been plenty of documented cases over the years that can and will shock sports bettors when they hear about them, and one was in 2000 when the police based in Delhi became aware of a conversation that they had intercepted between Hansie Cronje who at the time was the captain of the South African cricket team and a bookmaker that had been blacklisted.
It was found that Cronje had been paid a fair sum of money to rig cricket matches he was playing in, which did of course mean the bookmaker had been able to use that knowledge that a game was rigged to his advantage and could lay and back bets that were guaranteed to be winning ones for himself. The South African authorities however refused point blank for any of their players to stand trial or even be questioned by the Indian authorities, they were probably hoping that the scandal would blow over and go away, which on reflection was not the best course of action!
But due to the scandal becoming major news at the time an inquiry was eventually launched and it didn’t take long for Cronje to admit his wrong doing and admit to rigging quite a few different cricket matches.He also saw sense and named many other people from other teams who he had conspired with to rig those matches, all of whom were banned from the sport for several years.
The problem authorities have regarding the throwing and rigging of cricket matches is that you do not need to nobble the entire team of players, for it only takes a small number of them to have wandered over to the dark side for any game to be thrown, and there is a huge amount of money placed on cricket matches by punters all over the world, so it can be very profitable for those who do rig games.
As both that case from 2000 and the very recent events surrounding the Australian cricket team proves, there are always going to be people who are prepared to cheat in cricket, but the chances of them getting away with it is dwindling, much more so with the advent of new technology, used on a and around the pitch.
The game overall though is fair and whilst there have been several other instances of cheating in cricket over the years they are quite rare, and as such I would not put you off betting on any major cricket matches if you fancy doing so!
