Hawkins - Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy: a Journey to the Heart of Crickets Underworld

Ed Hawkins 2012

First published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

This electronic edition published in 2012

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eISBN 978 1 4081 6597 3 (e-book)

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The aim of this book is to get under the fingernails of the bookmakers, punters and fixers who seek to corrupt cricket, and to expose in minute, gory detail how they might have done it in the context of one extraordinary match, which could be set for infamy.

Due to the sheer number of allegations encountered, it was not the intention to prove or disprove corruption in certain matches or by certain players. However, it was impossible not to attempt to delve into the one game in particular, and it will soon become clear why.

Nor was it the intention to give the complete account of crickets historical relationship with corruption. Hansie Cronje, the South Africa captain who embarrassed the game with his corrupt ways, has only a walk-on role. The central characters are those who operate today in Indias underworld.

Some names and places have been changed to protect the identity of those who spoke, who worry that a knock on the door from the mafia is a possibility. The two central characters of this true story, Parthiv and Vinay, met me, and talked, without knowledge that this book was being written.

On two occasions in February 2011 and October 2012 I travelled to India to undertake research, visiting Delhi, Mumbai, Bhopal and Rajasthan. But my research into match- and spot-fixing began in the summer of 2009.

In India one lakh equals 100,000 rupees, or 1,200; one crore equals 100 lakh, or 120,000.

Ed Hawkins, North London, May 2012

Oxford Street, London. Late September 2010. The browsers, bargain hunters and tourists fill the pavements in their hordes. The windows of their basilicas Niketown, Topshop, Benetton et al reflect a thousand eager faces a minute. To stop and be swallowed by the greedy throng is to risk a bruising to the knees from the swinging of oversized shopping bags or to the ribs from the jutting lenses of daytrippers cameras.

If you are ever unfortunate enough to find yourself carried along by this wave of consumerism on Londons busiest street, do try to dig in your heels, hold back the tide, accept the inevitable bumps and barges and reflect. For this is the incongruous, somewhat surprising setting for the first and, it was hoped, last act of the story of match-fixing in cricket.

Where Oxford Street and Argyll Street meet is a small bureau de change. Apt really. More than 150 years ago it was the site for the Green Man and Still pub, an establishment notorious for being the place where cricketers would meet bookmakers. Money would change from one grubby hand to the next for fixes. And somewhere along this stretch of retail gluttony, which runs east to west from the landmark of Centre Points reach-for-the-skies tower to the green tranquillity of Hyde Park, is a clothes shop owned by Sanjay Chawla, the bookmaker who was recorded by Delhi police fixing matches with Hansie Cronje, the disgraced South Africa captain, in 2000.

The Cronje affair was the darkest of times for a sport thought to be the most noble. When the scandal broke, cricket was considered to have lost its virtue. Whether it had any to start with is debatable. Cricket and betting have a long, rich history, having been snug bedfellows since 1646, the earliest reference to gambling on the sport: a court case concerning the non-payment of a wager made on a game at Coxheath in Kent on 29 May of that year. The stake? Twelve candles.

In the early 18th century, cricket was financed by the aristocracy for the precise reason that they could gamble on it. Every match that was considered important, whether it was a first-class game or a single wicket competition, was played for money. Newspapers of the time did not report the scorecards and results of these contests, but did record the odds and who won the wager. In 1744 the first set of laws for the game were drawn up, specifically to settle gambling disputes.

It was in those days of yore that cricket was first introduced to what could be considered the precursor to the spot-bet: the act of betting on a happening other than the match result. In 1757, Lord March, a compulsive gambler, won money by putting a letter inside a cricket ball and persuading cricketers to throw it to one another over fixed distances. He had wagered that he could propel a letter a certain distance in a certain amount of time. Then there was the 4th Earl of Tankerville, who had such faith in his gardeners metronomic ability as a bowler that he bet 100 a huge sum in those days that he could land the ball on a feather. He duly did so.

So cricket, riddled with the spirit of gambling, was ripe for corruption. It was in a book called The Cricketers Fields, written by Reverend Pycroft, that this foul play was first laid bare. Pycroft frequented the Green Man and Still and became close to a number of players. For the taped mobile telephone conversations between Cronje and Chawla, read the conversation Pycroft had with an anonymous player about the fraternisation of cricketers with bookmakers, tricksters and blacklegs.

All the names I had ever heard as foremost in the game met together, drinking, card-playing, betting and singing at the Green Man, said the player. No man without his wine and such suppers as three guineas a game to lose, five to win could never pay for long. Pycroft included these quotes in his book and in doing so published the first account of corruption in cricket. The year was 1851.

Pycroft had an interview with Billy Beldham, the Surrey batsman who in 1997 was named as one of the hundred greatest cricketers of all time by John Woodcock, the esteemed former cricket correspondent of TheTimes. But Beldham too fixed a match, trying to make up for money lost in a previous fix that had gone awry, telling Pycroft: Matches were bought and matches were sold and gentlemen, who meant honestly, lost large sums of money, till the rogues beat themselves at last. Of this roguery, nobody ever suspected me.

Hundreds of pounds were bet upon all the great matches, and other wagers laid on the scores of the finest players. And that too by men who had a book for every race and every match in the sporting world men who lived by gambling.

The anonymous source and Beldham reveal the key ingredients of fixing: greed, poverty and drink, of which the Green Man had plenty. Cricketers would be bought booze by the bookmakers, loosening their tongues and inhibitions before suggesting they throw a match for money. The temptation was really very great too great by far for any poor man to be exposed to, said Pycrofts contact. What was easier than for such sharp gentlemen to mix with the players, to take advantage of their difficulties, and to say, Your backers, my Lord this, and the Duke of that, sell matches and overrule all your good play, so why shouldnt you have a share of the plunder? that was their constant argument serve them as they serve you.