Were bookies behind Rajkot fiasco?

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">RAJKOT: If you can''t fix a match through the players, can you do it through the spectators? That''s the question a lot of fans, who are as crazy about cricket as they are about betting on matches, asking after crowd trouble aborted an exciting finish to the third one-day international match between India and the West Indies here on Tuesday.<br />But it is possible that even if the bookies tried to fix the match through crowd trouble, they probably got their calculations wrong.The bookies, who are part of the syndicate which links up the racket in Mumbai, Delhi and right up to London, had placed heavy bets in favour of India losing their third straight match against the West Indies. Many insiders, who have a ringside view of the betting business, don''t rule out the possibility of crowd trouble being engineered by those who were to lose a lot of money because India was heading for victory.<br />That India was finally awarded the match under some complicated computations is a different story. According to one estimate, bets worth over Rs 10 crore had been placed in Rajkot alone and the bookies were expecting a West Indies win. In the morning, bookies were taking bets at a high of 66 paise to a rupee if India won the match. By the end of the West Indies innings, they felt certain the visitors had a winning total in 300 runs. An India win at this point was pegged as high as 84 paise to a rupee.<br />But Virender Sehwag and captain Sourav Ganguly upset all their calculations. With their first-innings total of nearly 200 runs in a little over 25 overs making an India win a distinct possibility, the bookies were set to lose a lot of money. It was then that trouble broke out and a stray bottle was thrown at Vasbert Drakes. Having seen crowd violence at Jamshedpur and Nagpur, match referee Mike Proctor had had enough.<br />But even though he was about to award the West Indies the match when crowd trouble broke out in Jamshedpur, he decided in favour of India through the Duckworth-Lewis method. This is perhaps something the bookies had not bargained for, according to sources. The sources also said that there was tremendous pressure from bookies in Mumbai and Kolkata to sabotage the match and many bookies, even in Ahmedabad, had stopped taking bets just before the match was disrupted. <br />A regular gambler in Ahmedabad, who was impressed with the high stakes that the bookies were offering for an India win, said he wanted to put more money while Sourav and Sehwag were blazing away but was told that the bookie had shut shop. <br />Those who were inside the stadium were surprised at how spectators and even cold drink bottles were being smuggled into the stadium by policemen in uniform. One stadium security official, wearing a yellow jacket, in fact had a fight with policemen who were bringing spectators without tickets.<br />Securitymen said that there were some elements in the crowd who had come prepared to disrupt the match, having smuggled in empty polythene bags in the pockets. These bags were then filled with mud from the stands to be used as missiles at the players. Even Proctor informed that these mud packets were thrown at Pedro Collins, who was not playing in the match but was walking along the boundary line.<br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Related Stories: </span><br /><img src="/images/ticker.gif"> <a href="http://www.thetimesofindia.online/articleshow.cms?art_id=28073920">Indians win match, but lose face</a><br /><img src="/images/ticker.gif"> <a href="/articleshow.cms?art_id=28079958">Kumble, Agarkar dropped from one-day squad</a><br /><img src="/images/ticker.gif"> <a href="/articleshow.cms?art_id=28078901">Ganguly urges Sehwag to keep playing his shots</a><br /><img src="/images/ticker.gif"> <a href="/articleshow.cms?art_id=28082433">Factbox: Crowd trouble at cricket matches</a> </img></img></img></img></div> </div>