Guardians of the game: How the ICC's outgoing anti-corruption officials battled to keep cricket clean

In his seminal book on UAE cricket, 'Playing to Fix', Paul Radley highlights the work of Ronnie Flanagan and Alex Marshall and the crucial role they played in exposing match-fixing

Alex Marshall is retiring from his post as the ICC's head of integrity. Reuters

Two of the most integral figures in international cricket’s fight against corruption are set to depart their roles in quick succession.

Earlier this week, the ICC announced Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the chair of their anti-corruption unit (ACU), will retire from the role at the end of next month.

Flanagan has been in the post since 2010 after replacing Lord Condon, the former commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

The ICC plan to recommend a successor at a board meeting next month, but they will also need to consider candidates for a new head of integrity. Alex Marshall, the incumbent, is also set to retire from his role at the end of November.

Marshall has led the campaign to keep the sport clean for the best part of the past decade.

The following is an extract from Playing to Fix, my recently released book about corruption in cricket, in which Marshall explained the machinations of fixing.

The book centres on the case of the UAE team, which saw six players banned for a variety of anti-corruption offences related to the 2019 T20 World Cup Qualifier.

In an interview for the book, Marshall explained why players beyond cricket’s mainstream have become targets for organised crime gangs involved in match-fixing.

Extract from 'Playing to Fix'

In a documentary about corruption in cricket broadcast by Al Jazeera in 2018 – so one year ahead of the 2019 Qualifier – two alleged match-fixers brag that they have the UAE team doing their bidding.

“We have the UAE team in our hand,” one of them, a Dubai-based businessman who plays domestic cricket in the emirate, is secretly filmed saying.

“We have five players. Say three are batsmen and two are bowlers.” He also says they pay them a fee of $25,000 per fix.

How can that be profitable? Matches involving the UAE are generally watched by few people in person. More often than not, their games are not on television. And the online streams of their matches hardly do the sort of numbers that are going to break the internet.

With such minimal profile, how can there be enough interest in their games from gamblers that a $25,000 bribe – or $125,000 if five players are working on it – can be worthwhile?

“You would be surprised at the level of liquidity,” Alex Marshall says. Although Marshall’s integrity unit regarded claims made in the documentary as being unsubstantiated and lacking in evidence, the figure quoted in the case of the UAE players is plausible. He says around $30,000 is the usual offer made to a player at that level of the sport to fix aspects of matches.

“It depends what is on on the same day and at the same time, but people are betting constantly,” Marshall says.

“There is sufficient liquidity to mean that, even at a relatively low-level tournament, it is definitely worth bribing someone $30,000.”

The ACU have investigated cases involving players in club competitions in Europe, in games played on AstroTurf wickets on fields with long grass and football-pitch markings on the outfield.

As lowly as that fixture had been, the fact it was live-streamed meant there would be a betting market on the game somewhere.

Marshall says the starting offer for a fix in a game like that can be $3,000. That fee rises depending on the level of the competition and the potential audience. For a high-profile franchise fixture or low-end international match, the starting fee would be in the region of $100,000.

“We watch every level of the game,” Marshall says. “We do the same education sessions with everyone at every level of the game, but criminality looks for vulnerability.

“Vulnerability will be in the place where people have less money, less good governance, where it is easier to gain access, and where players are more likely to accept $30,000 to $50,000.

“Some of the top players are multi-millionaires. If you are the criminal, how much are you going to have to offer a top international player, even if they are ever likely to be tempted? The alternative route for corruptors is compromise.”

A KPMG report, published in the year of the Qualifier, estimated the size of the Indian betting market to be around $120 billion, the overwhelming majority of which is sports betting.

That number is all the more startling given that gambling is largely prohibited in the country. The betting market is unregulated and run by underground bookmakers.

There are estimated to be over 100,000 of them across India. While they do operate outside of the law in their country, very few of those illegal bookmakers are involved in attempts to corrupt matches. In fact, the majority of cases are said to stem from as few as 10 to 12 individuals, according to the ACU.

“Bear in mind most cricket corruption connects to the unregulated betting markets,” Marshall says. “Nobody can see those.

“By contrast, in football and tennis, fixing is usually linked to regulated betting markets. Football and tennis start their corruption investigations with alerts from the betting industry. [In cricket] the bookies are illegal and unregulated.

“There are thousands of bookies, and most of them are not corrupt. They are illegal in the context of the country in which they are operating, but that doesn’t mean they are corruptors.

“A small subset of all the illegal bookies are also corruptors. They are the ones we are interested in. We are not there to catch illegal bookmaking in a country, we are there to stop corruption in cricket.”

Playing to Fix is available to buy in the UAE at amazon.ae and at pitchpublishing.co.uk.