‘Match-fixing’: Ex-PCB chief calls for probe into Pak-India World Cup semi

Journalist Ed Hawkins claims in his new book that an Indian bookmaker accurately predicted the outcome of the match.


Afp/afp November 10, 2012

KARACHI: The former head of Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Saturday called for an investigation into his country's 2011 World Cup semi-final against India after a new book raised the possibility that the game was fixed.

Britain's Daily Mail newspaper published excerpts of a book by sports-betting journalist Ed Hawkins in which he claimed an Indian bookmaker had accurately predicted what would happen in Pakistan's innings against their arch-rivals.

Hawkins said the bookmaker, Parthiv, sent him a Twitter message during the Indian innings correctly calling that when Pakistan batted, they would reach 100 runs easily, lose two wickets quickly, reach 150 with five down and lose by more than 20 runs.

India won the match by 29 runs to book their place in the final where they beat Sri Lanka to claim their second World Cup.

Hawkins does not make any specific allegation of match-fixing but cites a statistician as saying the odds of the bookmaker predicting the outcome in such detail purely by chance would be 405 to one against.

Suspicions were raised at the time, particularly over Pakistan's sloppy fielding; they dropped four catches from Indian batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar, allowing him to score a match-winning 85 runs.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) rejected the allegations in April 2011, saying there was no evidence to require an investigation into the match, but Ijaz Butt, the chairman of the PCB at the time, said there should be a probe.

"My suggestion would be that the matter should be investigated," Butt told ARY news channel in Pakistan. "There were a lot of allegations in Indian newspapers and even in Pakistani newspapers but there was no investigation,” he added.

Pakistan were in the thick of a fixing scandal a month before the semi-final when three of their top players -- Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer -- were handed long bans by the ICC for arranging no-balls to order during a Test against England in 2010.

The PCB refused to give any official reaction to the allegations.

COMMENTS (41)

romeo | 11 years ago | Reply

@gp65: Well thats why we all wants the truth should come out. India was not at all a team to win the world cup. You Indians should be grateful to our greedy and unpatriotic players who threw away the match for a few petty bucks. But ICC is a gutless organization run by Indians. ICC sucks.

gp65 | 11 years ago | Reply

"Hawkins said the bookmaker, Parthiv, sent him a Twitter message during the Indian innings correctly calling that when Pakistan batted, they would reach 100 runs easily, lose two wickets quickly, reach 150 with five down and lose by more than 20 runs...Hawkins does not make any specific allegation of match-fixing but cites a statistician as saying the odds of the bookmaker predicting the outcome in such detail purely by chance would be 405 to one against."

There were probably more than 405 twitter messages on the day of the match predicting what would happen, so if Parthiv's accuracy was correct then it just it means it was one of the 405 that proved correct as per the predicted statistical probability In fact it is like tly that there were 4050 twitter messages - just knowing how crazy the whole subcontinent is about cricket. SO there are probably 9 other people whom no-one has accused of fixing because their predictions came true based on a statistical probability. Go find them and scream louder still..

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