The 2017 edition of Indian Premier League (IPL) has come under the shadow of match- fixing after the police arrested three men on Thursday from the Kanpur hotel where IPL teams Gujarat Lions and Delhi Daredevils were staying.
One of the accused Nayan Ramesh Shah, who has been an U-19 and U-19 made some important revelations regarding the case. Reportedly he told the police that his job was to ensure the pitch prepared for the match was on the slower side. Apparently most of the bets placed through this group was on whether the match would be a high or low-scoring one. Nayan took the help of ground staff to temper with the pitches as they had free access to the ground.
Shedding more light on the scandal police said that Nayan’s job was to ensure excess watering of the pitch before it was handed over to the match referee.
“Watering had to be done in a way that pitch remains damp till the first innings is over; the pitch is watered a minimum four times before the pitch gets under the control of the match referee,”
Along with Nayan, Ramesh Kumar and Vikas Chauhan were also arrested on Thursday. Kumar is a member of the ground staff at Kanpur’s Green Park ground and reportedly took Rs 5000 each time he watered the pitch as per Shah’s instructions. After watering the pitch he would send a photo to Nayan who would then examine the pitch and send a message to his group that the team batting first would not be able to score 200 or more runs.
The SP Jitendra Srivastava has confirmed the evidences of pitch tampering and are working on finding out the other culprits.
More to follow…
