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| A dazzling extravaganza for cricket-crazy Indians | | | BL KAK
NEW DELHI, MAR 16
The World Cup is under way in the West Indies. It is, unmistakably, a dazzling extravaganza for a huge population of cricket-crazzy Indians. The event, officials admit, will, at the same time, result in public gambling, known in local parlance as satta, across the country, particularly in major cities and towns, over the next several weeks.
And if the assessments of the police were any indication, betting volumes during aq crucial one-day international cricket match, one that could involve India and Pakistan, can exceed 250 million dollars. Betting estimates for the World Cup, which will see 51 matches played, is more than 4 billion dollars.
It has already been estimated that illegal sport-betting amounts to well over 5 billion US dollars a year in India. According to some police officials, the anual volume could even be as high as 40 billion dollars, depending on the state of economy, especially stock exchange and real-estate prices, which can generate massive windfall gains for potential punters.
Cricket is a mania that borders on religious fervour in the subcontinent, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka and now emerging Bangladesh. Strangely, Indian and Pakistani punters end up backing each other if one of the teams is knocked out. That is, if India loses, Indians tend to back Pakistan against a team such as Australia, which is considered an outsider.
Thus, despite a police crackdown, satta remains one of the most organized gaming forums in India. If there is a lull in the world of cricket, bets may be placed on election results, even for an international high-profile one such as in the United States, or the arrival date of the monsoons as officially announced. According to reports, more than Rs 4 billion (90 million dollars) in bets were placed on predictions for the recent Punjab Assembly elections.
The means have become high-tech with the help of computers, mobile telephones and the Internet, with top underworld dons such as Dawood Ibrahim and others from Mumbai heavily involved in the trade during various times. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has blocked credit-card payments on websites that it believes are fronts for gambling. Nonetheless, many illegal Internet forums continue to be operated by prominent bookies that act as intermediaries and are just a search engine away. Punters set up an account with these sites, and instruct them to make bets on their behalf for a fee. Illegal hawala money-transferring channels are also used.
Traditionally, satta is at its busiest in India during cricket matches, where bets are placed on every aspect of the game: which team will win, whether a batsman will score a century, who will win the toss, whether a wicket will fall on the first ball, etc. Favorite bets on star cricketers are a first-ball dismissal, a half-century as well as a century, with further limits being set on the number of balls faced.
Such is the size of the industry that there have been allegations of players having been paid huge amounts to cater to the dictates of a bet. The former captain of South Africa, Hansie Cronje, is one famous culprit. He confessed to being paid thousands of dollars by bookies. Allegations have been made against such top world cricketers as Ajay Jadeja, Mohammed Azharrudin, a former India team captain, Salim Malik of Pakistan and Shane Warne of Australia, the world record holder in test wickets taken.
New methods, some government sleuths point out, are continually devised to persuade clients to place bets, as well as to circumvent the police. With mobile phones and e-mails under the threat of being monitored, some operators offer big clients "free home delivery" service. Errand boys fan out with specially designed chits of paper with a list of the various bets on offer. Each client has a code known orally to the operator. The client then ticks off his odds according to his preference, or places fresh bets if he wants to. |
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