Daring fake Indian cricket competition reminder of game’s historic relationship with betting

Last week a remarkable story broke about a fraudulent cricket competition in India. Simultaneously, it was a reminder of a level of invention and entrepreneurship characteristic of the region and cricket’s historic relationship with betting.

This was prevalent in 17th- and 18th-century England, when matches, hosted by aristocrats but involving hired professionals, were played for significant sums of money. The matches also provided opportunities for lower classes to indulge in betting.

Echoes of this feudalistic structure were evident in the Indian fraud.

Four people are alleged to have cleared a space on a farm in a village in Gujarat, western India. There, they created a cricket pitch, with boundary lines, halogen lamps, and high-resolution cameras. The set up was complete with scores being displayed on a live streaming screen, using computer-generated graphics.

The 20 or so players were hired hands, laborers, and young, unemployed, people, who were paid $5 per game. They wore outfits which sought to replicate those of three Indian Premier League teams — Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians, and Gujarat Titans.

Matches were broadcast on a YouTube channel called IPL. No wide-angled view of play was shown, with focus upon the players. Crowd-noise sound effects were downloaded from the internet supplemented by a speaker who sounded similar to one of the IPL’s actual commentators.

All of these features were designed to provide authenticity, but for whom? The real IPL had concluded on May 29 and this one began three weeks later. Anyone in cricket-playing nations would have known this. It seems that the target market was Russia, not noted for having much interest or ability in cricket.

However, the production of the