There’ll be a clampdown on in-play betting at the Cricket World Cup with any perpetrators barred for the rest of tournament.
The style of betting, also known as pitchsiding, has become popular with punters who seek to gain a market advantage by betting online at actual events, with small telecast delays often proving helpful to them.
It is not available online in Australia but savvy punters who have international mobiles and betting accounts can get around this.
Speaking ahead of the Cup starting on Saturday week, the head of the ICC’s anti-corruption unit Sir Ronnie Flanagan maintained the issue went far deeper than a few shrewd punters getting the one-up on betting agencies.
“I think the risk is that this feeds into a wider and more-sophisticated network of illegal betting, often in the Indian sub-continent,” he said.
“Facilitating people to either bet on events which are then known events or in terms of illegal bookmakers adjusting their odds to know they should be shortening the odds on something … I think that’s where it is a risk of being some sort of minor contagion.”
There have already been at least three instances of pitchsiding during the Australian summer, with a man ejected from two Big Bash League games and another during the first match of the ODI series.
Flanagan, a former home office inspector in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and a chief constable in the latter, said the ICC was sharing information with the New Zealand and Australian governments and state governments to ensure a corruption-free event.
His message to players was not of mistrust in them but more about being wary of the criminal elements who could seek to take advantage of them.
“In our line of work, we too often meet and know that there are rotten people out there, criminal people out there, who will do all in their power to get at players and others of influence within the game,” he said.
“They will trick them; they will coerce them; they will try and attract them.
“They are almost like paedophiles in how they attempt to groom people into ultimately attempting to do what suits their nefarious intentions in terms of illegal betting and other elements of criminality.”
