24yo French tennis player Mathieu Montcourt was found dead this week, on the day he was to begin his five-week suspension for betting on tennis. The poor bloke wagered a grand sum of $192 across 36 matches - three bucks on each game, back in 2005 - yet was hammered with a way out-of-proportion $12,000 fine and five-week suspension. Yet according to the Metro, he's a match-fixer.
According to this report , IPL tournaments so far have been rife with spot-fixing - that is fixing minor elements of the game - runs in a single over, number of wides bowled etc. The curious part of that article is that the Income Tax department are supposed to have found these crimes. What idiot would be stupid enough to put down 'big wad of cash handed to me by bookie' as a source of income? Backhanders for sportsmen, particularly in a celebrity- and cricket-obsessed culture like India are not rare. They could come from anything like turning up to open someone's new business (not a sponsor, but a 'friend of a friend' arrangement), to being a guest at some devoted fan's dinner party etc. The opportunities are always there, and there will always be people trying to become friends with players and their entourage - that is human nature. This form of match-fixing (and it's not really fixing a match, just a minor element of it) is very hard to prove, but also,
Comments
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comments, but if you're a spammer, you've just wasted your time - it won't get posted.