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Crickets Wagering Past

Trent Bridge
Trent Bridge
©Cricket World / John Mallet
 

Most large sports were able to grow with something of a shroud to controversy, by the time they emerged in a big way for platforms like TV or online streaming, they’d either had enough controversy that it could be ignored or the controversy was well contained – for most sports this typically involved online betting and match fixing, with a huge number of new platforms emerging like this bet365 Uganda registration offer there were opportunities for up-and-comers to earn a little extra when they may still not be earning enough to fully support themselves.

Cricket has been particularly subject to this throughout history before online platforms even became an option, as an early sport many press outlets would tend to report on odds of the game rather than the game coverage itself with wealthy individuals owning their own teams to strengthen betting odds. With the sport growing, it lead to the average Joe to start betting too, and with the sport being huge across multiple continents and being the national sport for many countries, early betting has transformed into what it is today with cricket becoming one of the most bet sports in the world.

As the sport grew, it experience many of the same issues as other major sports, but due to broadcasting and the growth of the internet at the time, a very major game would turn into something of a sour memory for many cricket fans – in a match between India and South Africa in 2000, the South African captain Hansie Cronje had been discovered accepting a cash payout for fixing the match, and leaving a poor piece of history for cricket fans to remember.

Whilst this certainly isn’t the norm, players approached for match-fixing does happen from time to time but simply not reported, where this case stands out however is that match fixing within major sporting, particularly at the highest level, is much less common, and to see it happen with television broadcasting and the early emergence of online betting, it certainly leaves a stain.

With modern betting platforms, fans can place a wager using real-time data whilst a match is being played and take advantage of all of the tools now available through our mobile devices, and because the flow of data is so large it has become much more difficult for match fixing and other corruption to take place particularly on the larger stage, but that doesn’t stop it from happening in smaller local league games and other matches with less prominence.

Despite being a very old sport, in the grand scheme of things its rise to popularity and prominence is still relatively new compared to other major sporting events, as such scandals seemingly stick around for a much longer period of time and become much harder to shake too – but this also means there’s an interesting case study that can be built with crickets wagering past and how it has evolved and changed over time.