BCCI anti-corruption consultant Neeraj Kumar says corruption still exists

BCCI anti-corruption unit (ACU) consultant Neeraj Kumar has revealed that despite match fixing and betting not being too much prevalent in international cricket these days but it still exists especially in 2nd and 3rd tier tournaments and the T20 leagues organised by the state board across India and other countries. Spot fixing first broke out in 2000 involving former India captain and South Africa captain Mohammad Azharuddin and Hansie Cronje respectively.

The former police commissioner Neeraj Kumar was in charge of two major scandals in cricket. One was way back in 2000 when the match-fixing saga broke out and the latest one was when three IPL players were imprisoned after their alleged involvement in spot-fixing. He said that cricket ‘at the national level is much cleaner than what it used to be”.

“Now having joined the BCCI, I see so much of it happening. Fortunately, I can say with some amount of authority and conviction that our national team at this point of time is above board. But in the second rung and third rung, the B tiers and C tiers, the premier leagues, including the Karnataka Premier League a lot of hanky panky goes on,” the retired IPS officer was quoted as saying by the Indian Express.

Despite all these match-fixing cases, Neeraj believes that corruption is still quite prevalent in Asian countries especially in the lower level tournaments. “There is corruption even now. There is more corruption in some parts of the world – Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and in tier B and C cities in local tournaments,” he said.

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Neeraj conceded that there was some “hanky panky” during the 2015 IPL but the whole racket was caught after the players reported that they were approached by the bookies. Neeraj is currently in Bengaluru, the venue for the 2nd Test between India and Australia spoke at length regarding this matter during the release of a Kannada translation of his book ‘Dial D for Don’ which was originally published in 2015.