Revealed: English women's cricket becomes match-fixing target
There are growing fears that English women's cricket is becoming a soft target for corruption, with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of bets placed on matches.
Corruption in men's cricket has been a longstanding issue for the sport, with numerous high-profile examples coming to light.
A Telegraph Sport investigation can reveal a crackdown taking place in the women's game after uncovering:
A total of £300,000 bet on one domestic match
Players approached for team information via social media
Anti-corruption officials sent to matches as part of crackdown
Players forced to hand in mobile phones to officials during games
Minimal security at venues during matches
Akhter case highlights threat to women's game
The men's game has been embroiled in plenty of infamous match-fixing scandals from the Hansie Cronje affair to three Pakistan players being banned and jailed for spot-fixing against England in 2010.
It was only in February of this year, however, that the first female player was banned for corruption by the International Cricket Council.
Former Bangladesh international Shohely Akhter, who played two ODIs and 13 T20Is, was found guilty of attempting to fix matches, offering a bribe, failing to disclose full details of an approach to the ICC's Anti-Corruption Code and obstructing the organisation's investigation.
In one instance, she even tried to convince a fellow player to get out hit wicket in a match against Australia during the 2023 T20 World Cup, promising to pay 2 million Bangladeshi Takas (£12,000) for the fix.
Akhter formally admitted breaching five provisions of the anti-corruption code and was banned from all cricket for five years.
Players at lower levels of the women's game have been asked to report approaches made to them and Telegraph Sport understands that there have been some made via anonymous accounts on social media by those looking for team information about a particular match.
There is also evidence of high sums being bet on domestic women's matches.
As part of a wider restructure of the domestic women's game, the T20 County Cup has been launched as a FA Cup-style knockout including all minor counties as well as the 18 first-class ones across tiers one, two and three.
A number of games have been taking place at grounds rarely used for first-class cricket like Exmouth, Brecon and Fenner's. These venues come with far less security, facilities and monitoring of those in attendance.
Just a few days ago, the quarter-final match between Kent, a tier-two county side, and the Blaze, who represent Nottinghamshire, had a total of more than £296,000 placed on it via the Betfair exchange, which is just one betting platform. The match was also viewed by more than 77,000 people on YouTube.
At the same point on the same day, the total bet across all nine men's county fixtures totalled just £8,535 on that website.
In the women's domestic game, there is no suggestion, at present, that any matches have been fixed. But one of the initial concerns was caused by the number of wides being bowled, especially in tier-two competition.
Across the first 60 matches of the domestic women's season, there were 1,888, at an average of 31.46 a match. There were 15 matches with 40 or more wides.
In one innings, a side conceded 72 extras of which 61 were wides, while the other team conceded 26 extras, making the match total 98. However, as a non-professional league where the players receive no compensation for playing cricket, the standards can often vary, which could be the cause of the high numbers of extras.
Anti-corruption officers are now expected to look for patterns when it comes to extras as it is not a market often offered by legal betting companies.
Some women's streams on YouTube can draw thousands of viewers, with the majority of remarks in the comments section referencing what people need for bets to come in and how much they have placed, rather than the action.
During one Women's One-Day Cup match, viewers in the comments openly posted about their bets in Hindi and, of the 2,000 who watched the stream, the majority are believed to be based overseas.
There was even one comment referencing a Raja Bets website, which is not licensed for operations in the UK. Some users have posted their bets on social media with links to websites of which almost all finish in '.in', the country code for India.
Anti-corruption officials focused on games further down pyramid
In light of examples like these, the England and Wales Cricket Board has been sending anti-corruption officers to women's matches with a particular focus on those further down the pyramid in the T20 County Cup and in tier two.
By the midway point of the first innings of one such match, a total of almost £20,000 had been bet on the Betfair exchange.
While it is not an exceptional amount compared to the millions that are sometimes bet on overseas T20 franchise tournaments, it is a considerable sum given the crowd in attendance was fewer than 50 people.
Another game in the same competition was also brought to the attention of the ECB's anti-corruption officials for the sums bet on it.
It is understood that the ECB is looking to increase education programmes attended by all players at the start of the season. Extra measures have been put in place, too.
Players have to hand in their phones at the start of the match, a practice that has long existed in international cricket and televised men's county games, with only a select few in the dressing room, including media officers and medical staff, allowed their devices.
But that is not yet uniform across the women's county set-up. For some tier-two matches players are allowed to keep their phones, but not in games that are part of double-headers alongside the men's team or any matches against a tier-one side.
Although some counties apply designated players and match official areas, which unaccredited people cannot access, it is not a uniform rule across the divisions.
At the smaller grounds, Telegraph Sport discovered first-hand it can be far too easy for those without accreditation to wander into areas which should be reserved for umpires and players without being stopped by any security.
Some matches have also had free entry, with no one checking tickets or any monitoring of who is watching the match.
'Courtsiding' becoming big concern
In cricket, because of the nature of the game, there is almost no limit to the number of bets that can be placed on a particular match. The markets go far beyond simply who will score the most runs, take the most wickets or which side will win.
It can go as detailed as specific scores by players, economy rates of bowlers, what score a team will have at a particular point in the game or even whether both teams hit a boundary in their first over. The case involving Pakistan, from the Lord's Test in 2010, related to the deliberate bowling of no balls.
But the bigger concern is the relaying of data from the ground overseas to tell someone what is going to happen prior to the betting market being closed known as 'courtsiding'. This relies on speed, but the delay of betting markets being closed can take longer than someone passing on a message to another individual.
Betting sites are often banned for those in the ground to try to prevent that, but that does not necessarily stop it.
Anti-corruption officials are keen to make the point that their presence does not imply players are doing anything improper.
'The presence of an anti-corruption official is not indicative of the players doing something wrong,' Steve Richardson, who was investigations coordinator for the ICC's anti-corruption unit for seven years until 2023, said.
'It's indicative of the level of risk that the ECB perceives the women's game to be at, and the women's game is now more professional than it's ever been. With that comes betting markets and with that comes a risk of corruption.'
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