Match-Fixing in Cricket

Cricket – Match Fixing

Dead Fix –You Bet. They Win

My new thriller, DEAD FIX is published in January 2018 and is hugely topical because the theme is about match fixing in sport and cricket in particular. This scourge is not new. A betting scandal in baseball erupted in America around 100 years ago. There have been cheats in professional football (soccer) throughout Europe linked to betting syndicates and bookmakers. Professional tennis has been targeted.

Topicality comes because of the revelations in the Sun newspaper of London during December about attempts to fix the outcome of the current Ashes Test series between England and Australia. To me, the news came as no surprise. Cricket has been embroiled with cheating players for over 20 years at least. Far too few have been named and shamed or prosecuted. Proving corruption is very difficult.

The scale of the problem has accelerated with the arrival of online betting available through the Internet. Billions can be staked on big fixtures, much of the money being bet on a black market and coming from India and Pakistan where betting is illegal. That however does not prevent it taking place. Link this to organised criminals operating in the Asian subcontinent and from locations like Dubai and London and suddenly a huge pot of money is available to sucker young players from England, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies, South Africa and the Asian subcontinent playing the game to orders in return for huge sums of money.

DEAD FIX takes the reader into a murky world where life can be cheap and intimidation is plentiful for those players who find themselves caught up in a situation from which there is no obvious escape. Det. Insp. Todd “Ratso” Holtom enters this dangerous arena. As a cricket lover himself, he hates what is going on and relishes the chance to bring down criminals who operate from Indian backstreets through to 5-star hotels.
DEAD FIX is published and available from Amazon on KINDLE from 28th January 2018 and as a paperback also during January.