The Board of Control for Cricket in India is set to hire foreign agencies to track betting syndicates during the Indian Premier League 2020 in the United Arab Emirates.
“We are hiring professional agencies, who would monitor the betting market and track trends on social media. They would alert us in case they find anything that arouses suspicion,” Anti Corruption Unit chief Ajit Singh told
Sportstar .
It has been learnt that one of the agencies has prior experience of tracking sports corruption. “They will operate independently and give us reports regularly. They have a strong network, which would help us gather more information,” Singh, a former Director General of Police (Rajasthan), said.
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The eight-member ACU will keep a check on all the teams, who will be inside the bio-bubbles in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.
“We are doing it for this year, and we will see how things work out. It’s up to them (the agency) to figure out a plan for how they want to track the social media space,” Singh said, adding that his team will be in coordination with the agency and also with all the franchises.
While there would be no integrity officers, each outfit would have two security liaison officers, who would be with the teams in the hotel and would also accompany them for the training sessions. “Since there would be just three venues, we will do it in-house. Since the venues are also at a driving distance, it should not be a problem in terms of managing the anti-corruption operations,” Singh said.
Since last year, the ACU has been handling its operations of the IPL independently without involving the International Cricket Council.
“There are challenges, but the advantage is all the players will be inside a bubble. There is no interaction with outsiders, so that will be a good thing,” Singh stated.
The ACU officers will start flying out to the UAE in groups over the next “few days”.
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