Cricket: Bookie held in corruption crackdown

The arrest of one of India's biggest cricket bookmakers has cast a shadow over the sport in the subcontinent. Peter Popham reports from Delhi.

Rumours of bribery, corruption and match-fixing on a massive scale have been the talk of Indian and Pakistani cricket throughout the summer.

After a deluge of confessions and allegations, and after an inquiry that was widely regarded as a sop, the story yesterday moved into the legal realm with the arrest of Om Prakash Dharuka, at his home in Calcutta.

"It is likely that Mr Dharuka had regular contacts with a number of current Indian cricketers who are alleged to be involved in the betting scam," a police superintendent said. "It is a significant breakthrough, which may lead us to the centre of an international nexus."

Corruption in all spheres is the small change of Indian conversation, but it has been particularly rampant in cricket talk ever since the former Indian test batsman Manoj Prabhakar (39 appearances for his country, the last one in 1995) went public in an article in the weekly magazine Outlook in June. He said he had been "approached...to perform below par in a certain match. Before the India-Pakistan match in Sri Lanka for the Singer Cup in 1994, I was offered [pounds 40,000] by an Indian team member for sabotaging the match in Pakistan's favour. I was told to play below my usual standard. I told him to get out of my room."

Manoj has steadfastly refused to name the player, but big names in Indian cricket have been bandied about ever since. The critical relationships are said to be between the bookies, working illegally by telephone and taking bets on the result of games which range from pounds 85 to more than pounds 8,000; corruptible players; and certain journalists who act as go-betweens, passing on propositions that are hard to refuse.

One journalist said: "Calls from Dubai and Bombay come to certain journalists on a regular basis during the toss. The same journalists interact with the players in the dressing room. It happens all the time."