Suspicious activities in black market harder to track, says ICC ACU chief Flanagan

Ever since the 2013 Indian Premier League (IPL) spot-fixing scandal came to light, calls to legalise the betting industry in India have grown louder. The Supreme Court-appointed Justice Lodha Committee, too, recommended the same, stating that the country should lay down laws in that regard.

On Sunday, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, head of the International Cricket Council's (ICC) Anti Corruption Unit (ACU), said their job of investigating suspicious activities in cricket matches gets "harder" in a country like India, where illegal betting thrives in big tournaments like the upcoming 2016 World T20, which is due to begin on Tuesday.

"Firstly, if we talk about countries where betting is legal and is heavily regulated, we have a memorandum of understanding with betting companies, and we find that it is helpful because they report any unusual spikes in betting of a particular event or time and then we investigate it," Flanagan, who was in the city to talk about processes to ensure that the mega event remains clean, said.

"Obviously, the black market betting industry is harder to track. But we engage a company that helps us with legal betting industries and they are currently doing some research in the illegal betting market. In addition to that, we have informers that help us.

"Some people say to us 'why then don't countries like India or Pakistan legalise betting and then control it?' The truth is that for a good reason, it's just not going to happen. We have to accept that as a fact, and try our best to research on our methods and to detect what goes on the illegal betting market," he said.

Flanagan, a retired senior British police officer, added that it wasn't for him to suggest whether India should legalise betting, something that the Lodha panel has strongly backed.

"Honestly, it is not for me to suggest what a sovereign nation does, but I do say that where betting is legalised, it is heavily regulated and those regulators work in close conjunction with us," he said.

Going into specific measures that their unit has put in place for the World T20, Flanagan said all players, support staff and match officials will be given a small booklet that would contain a 24x7 hotline number specifically for this tournament to report any approaches.

"We give them a little booklet to fit into their wallet that reminds them of their responsibilities, and also gives them a hotline number to contact us at any time. We have a tournament-specific 24-hour hotline and another hotline that people can contact us in our office in Dubai," he said, adding that this process was followed even during last year's ICC World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

For long, a criticism of the ICC ACU has been that it is a toothless body that does little in stopping the menace in the game. However, Flanagan gave an example of how they had prevented some players of an international team from indulging in corruption recently.

"Quite recently, we had reason to believe that members of a particular team had intentions to manipulate games in forthcoming matches. Certain individuals had intention to manipulate and facilitate betting on those events.

We decided that we would intervene in this particular case. We would bring together the entire squad, focus on individuals whom we suspected, would remind them and the entire squad of all the responsibilities.

"I am certain that our action in that particular case did indeed avert and prevent the intention of just one or two individuals. We have taken action against those individuals and we will be taking further action. There are concrete examples of action that we take place based on intelligence, whereby we know we have prevented and averted the intention of bad people to corrupt the game," he said.

'Amir came forward to make a video for us'

Sir Ronnie Flanagan also revealed that Pakistan pacer Mohammad Amir, who was guilty of spot-fixing in 2010 but is back in the international team after serving his five-year ban, came forward to make a video to educate other players about the effect of the episode. "Amir, at a very early stage, did make a video for us after he was out of prison, where he admitted his guilt and described the effect that it had on him. We have used that in the past for the education of players," Flanagan said. "Someone who is genuine and honestly admitting their guilt and preferred to use their experience to help others avoid it, it is a legitimate tool to us. I think it can be really dramatic message."