14:20
Speed4career
The Delhi Police has arrested three cricketers, including controversial pace bowler S Sreesanth, for conspiring with bookies to underperform in IPL matches in exchange for money, sending shockwaves through the world of cricket and putting an unflattering spotlight on one of India's biggest entertainment businesses.
Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan, all members of the Rajasthan Royals team that is partly owned by Bollywood actor Shilpa Shetty and her businessman husband Raj Kundra, are accused of "spot-fixing".
Spot-fixing is a practice that involves rigging parts of a match in concert with bookies. The three, police said, resorted to spot-fixing in matches with the Mumbai, Pune and Punjab teams, and were paid more than 1 crore.
The Delhi Police, which more than a decade ago uncovered the dirty underbelly of cricket by exposing a match-fixing scandal involving South African players and bookies, said on Thursday it swooped in on the three players in a Mumbai hotel early on Thursday after tapped phone conversions between them and bookies established the crime.
Police also arrested 11 bookies and Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar told reporters in Delhi that the kingpin of the betting scandal was overseas and the episode had underworld links, bringing back memories of the match-fixing scandal of the late 1990s when Indian cricketers were linked to fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim.
The police chief, however, gave a clean chit to all other IPL players and the managements of the Rajasthan Royals and other IPL teams. "No other players, Indian or foreign, are involved as per our investigation. We, however, cannot say with certainty if this was not happening in other IPL teams or has not happened in other matches. The proof we have is against only these three players and our probe does not show that the conspiracy goes beyond these players to the team owners," Kumar said.
But the cricketing fraternity was left in a state of shock.
"I am disgusted that these sort of things are still happening in the game," said former India captain Kapil Dev.
Rajasthan Royals captain and one of India's most respected cricketers Rahul Dravid said he was devastated. "I am shocked, disappointed, and distressed by the events that have resulted in the arrests last night and this morning. Rajasthan Royals is a special team, where we have always operated like a family - so this is particularly devastating," he said in a statement.
The six-year-old Indian Premier League, a property of the world's richest cricketing body, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, features teams owned by some of India's top businessmen and Bollywood stars. Team owners include tycoons such as Mukesh Ambani,Vijay Mallya, N Srinivasan and stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty. It has some of the world's best cricketers playing in the games that involve the 20-20 format and feature unabashed commercialism.
Posted in
0 comments :
Post a Comment