Football and hockey are hardly the only big-league sports with betting scandals — millions are riding on the results of tomorrow’s series finale between India and Pakistan. SONYA FATAH visits a big-time Karachi bookie who’s in the thick of it
The Globe and Mail, Saturday, February 18, 2006
SONYA FATAH
A surveillance camera in the den scans the street, but little about the two-storey home in an elite Karachi neighbourhood identifies it as a major betting operation. Inside, the place is barely furnished, but in a room upstairs eight phones sit lined up on a Formica tabletop, each attached to a tape recorder.
Meanwhile, the head honcho, who asks to be called “Javed,” sits behind a desk fielding calls from clients who are betting hundreds of thousands of rupees on one of sport’s titanic struggles: the India-Pakistan cricket series that wraps up tomorrow in Karachi.
Nearby, an assistant furiously jots down bets on a printed pad, while in the corner another man handles overseas calls from such places as Britain, Canada and Saudi Arabia. On the far side of the room, an analyst follows every move of the match being played and speculates on the fast-changing rates as wickets fall and balls are smashed to the edges of the pitch. Meanwhile, at the top of the gambling food chain, the big bosses sit in far-off Dubai, using two hotline connections to determine Javed’s rates as the match unfolds.
Even though it’s illegal, cricket betting is no small business in Pakistan, where virtually everyone is obsessed with the game. Javed’s operation is one of roughly 20 in Karachi, and today he is handling bets he says total about 50 million Pakistani rupees, almost $1-million.
But the Pakistani market is small potatoes compared with its next-door neighbour. “If you equate the size of India’s betting business with a Hummer,” he says, “then the size of Pakistan’s business is about the size of a Honda 50-cc motorbike.”
India’s DNA newspaper reports that betting on Thursday’s fourth match in the series was expected to top $260-million. And it hardly matters that India’s decisive win sealed a series victory even before tomorrow’s final match. “Betting numbers are not affected by the match’s outcome,” Javed explains.
Also, there is little threat of interference from the authorities because officials at all levels are on bookies’ payrolls. “Everyone is involved,” Javed says nonchalantly. Every month, a middleman transfers a certain sum, called maheena, to police and intelligence officers.
But there is one thing that bookies, punters and spectators alike can’t abide: players who decide to cross the line. Just as the National Hockey League was relieved when hockey players caught up in the Rick Tocchet betting scandal weren’t accused of placing wagers on their own sport, big-league cricket takes a dim view of anything that suggests games are being fixed.
In 2000, former South African captain Hansie Cronje was banned from the game for life after he admitted to match-fixing. At the time, investigators discovered that he wasn’t the only national captain with strong links to big bookies. “The Cronje Affair” jump-started a series of investigations that eventually ended the career of Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin, led to Pakistani stars Wasim Akram and Salim Malik being put on trial, and allegations being made against Australian national players as well.
Just as the NHL is grappling with its negative fallout, the exposés damaged the spirit of cricket and undermined the steadfast faith of its global following. So the International Cricketing Council (ICC) clamped down, making an example of players such as Mr. Cronje and imposing a whole new set of rules.
Speculation that matches are fixed persists among cricket’s much-obsessed audience. But since the Cronje affair, a team of observers hired by the ICC is always present to oversee any international series. Also, players can no longer carry cellphones or talk to non-participants during matches.
So now “things are not so blatant,” says Fereshteh Gati-Aslam, a former sportswriter with the daily English paper The News, who was called to testify before a Pakistani judicial committee on betting, bribery and match-fixing. “Which means that games are not being fixed by teams, but what the individuals do in their own capacity is not commented on any more, mostly because it’s very hard to prove. There can be speculation, but no direct accusation.”
So, while outright fixing is now rare, cricket analysts claim that many players are willing to help influence so-called “fancy” betting.
In fact, Javed says fancy (also known as index or session) betting is now the norm. Bettors put down money on scores per session, which means betting at the close of 15, then 30 and finally 50 overs, with the odds fluctuating as the match goes on. Every run, boundary, six scored changes the rate of return offered by bookies. As well, bets are placed on toss decisions, whether a score will be even or odd, or whether someone will score a century.
“Australia,” Javed says, “is a big champion of session betting. They’ll play defensively for the first 15 overs and keep the run rate down. Then they’ll slog it out in the 16th over, once the session is over,” and the final betting rates are set.
In 2003, former Pakistan captain Rashid Latif, a strong advocate of clean cricket, appealed to the ICC. “I am not accusing any team or players of indulging in this,” he wrote. “I am merely identifying a loophole . . . which has created big opportunities of making money and indirectly influencing the outcome of matches. This provides a chance for the bookies to approach top-order batsmen to achieve unusual scores and affect the complexion of competitive matches.”
Yet Javed swears that the current Pakistan team is not involved in fancy fixing. “You want to know why?” he asks. “You know they’ve all become very religious of late . . . There’s no way they would involve themselves in fixing matches.”
Others take a darker view. “Even if fancy fixing does exist,” a senior cricket writer says, “people would rather sweep it under the carpet. The public would like to think it’s not happening.”
But an increased religiosity is certainly evident. When former Pakistani batsman Saeed Anwer lost his three-year-old daughter, he turned to religion and brought many fellow cricketers to Islamic enlightenment as well. Islamic preachers have influenced the team deeply, and helped to project a cleaner image. “It also creates a public impression that ‘we’re not involved,’ ” the skeptical writer adds.
Back at his betting shops, Javed says he hasn’t been “involved” all that long himself. He has been a big-league bookie for five years. Three years before that, he was on the other side of the fence. “I was a client,” he says. “When I lost all my money betting, I figured I better get it back from where I lost it.”
So he started taking bets from friends and soon built a reputation. Now, he and four partners run two locations with about 12 employees while the big bosses sits safely in Dubai, where they determine the odds, which are communicate via telephone hotlines to bookies in both India and Pakistan.
Once broke, Javed says he has everything money can buy. “You can’t imagine the amount of money that’s in this business. It’s beyond calculation.” For his own security, every conversation is taped and the neighbourhood is under constant surveillance. And “if something goes wrong, in the rare instance that a client refuses to cough up money, there are ways to take care of him,” Javed says. “Physical and mental torture, for instance.”
But that’s a rarity, he insists, because, ultimately, gambling is not a bad business. “Look, we’re not killers,” he emphasizes. “The police are after terrorists, drugs, weapons. This is just a money game.”
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