CA set to crack whip against Australian sports bookmakers
Sydney, Dec 13(ANI)
A leaked legal letter has revealed a major betting crackdown by Cricket Australia (CA) that has exposed the ongoing worries about the game's integrity.
CA has demanded Australian sports bookmakers cease betting on a stream of options that CA believes have the potential to be manipulated by current players.
Some of the exotic bet types that CA wants stopped such as betting on whether only players could arguably, manipulate a batsman scores over or under a specified number of runs.
The leaked letter, written by CA's legal counsel Tim Leoncelli, and sent to bookmakers, including Sportingbet, Tom Waterhouse.com and Betstar, lists the bet types that CA wants banned and explains its rationale for forbidding each bet.
"Offering bet types in breach of these rules threatens the integrity of the sport and the sports betting industry and CA will take appropriate action. No further correspondence will be entered into," News.com.au quoted the letter, as saying.
CA wants to be seen to be doing the right thing in the wake of major cricket betting scandals including the spot-fixing dramas in England, where three of Pakistan's players were jailed after a newspaper sting revealed they bowled no-balls for profit.
When the letter lists the reason for banning various bet types, it notes on several occasions that some bets are too easy to manipulate by an individual.
Several bookies that have information sharing or integrity agreements with CA have already had little choice but to ban the bet types although some will submit to CA that overseas betting organisations offer the bet types.
A CA spokesman said: "CA takes the integrity of the game very seriously and has these arrangements to ensure fans have confidence that the integrity of the game is being protected."