Two Indians named in SA spot-fixing scandal

MUMBAI: Indian nationals Manesh Jain and Imran Muskan Shimji were named in South African court papers relating to former cricketer Gulam Bodi’s appearance on nine counts of corruption in the Pretoria Commercial Crimes Court just over a week ago.

The state did not oppose Bodi’s bail (set at R3000) but prosecutor Willem van Zyl set certain pre-conditions for the former professional cricketer: his passport was confiscated and he was prevented from contacting any of the players he recruited.

In January 2016, Bodi was suspended for 20 years by Cricket South Africa (CSA) for his role as a recruiting agent who linked Indian betting syndicates with South African domestic cricketers playing in the RAM SLAM T20 the previous December.

It appears as though Jain and Shimji played the role of intermediaries, reaching out to Bodi and introducing him to India-based illegal betting syndicates. Bodi visited India in August 2015 - a couple of months before the South African season was due to begin - to meet with Jain, Shimji and syndicate members.

While in India he was told that players participating in spot-fixing could expect to earn between R600000 - R700000 (~ 44000 - 52000 USD) per match. They were also promised luxury watches. Bodi himself was offered R150000 (~ 11000 USD) per match.

When he returned from India, Bodi busied himself recruiting. He’d played his last first-class cricket for the Lions towards the end of the 2014/15 season and still had friends in the Lions dressing-room. It emerged later that five of the six other players implicated in the spot-fixing scams and subsequent subterfuge were Lions. The other, Ethy Mbhalati, was nearing the end of a long and loyal career at the Titans.

Bodi used August and September to meet with players he thought would be pre-disposed to his overtures. He met some off them in car-parks, some in Portuguese-themed grilled chicken outlets and some in strip clubs in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. During the Africa T20, a pre-season tournament played by semi-professional South African teams at a variety of smaller venues, he approached Vaughn van Jaarsveld and Craig Alexander.

Both were playing for KwaZulu-Natal Inland at the time, and, in approaching them, Bodi made the first of several mistakes. Van Jaarsveld reported the overtures to Cricket South Africa’s anti-corruption unit. The unit was therefore alerted and they prepared themselves for the start of the RAM SLAM T20 due to take place later that year.

Two early matches in the tournament - the Lions away to the Dolphins at Kingsmead, and the Lions at home in Potch to the Titans - have since been identified as problematic. An unnamed spectator with a real-time betting platform on his mobile phone was escorted out of the ground in Potch, with a player’s father capturing the incident on his cell phone camera.

The match was low-scoring, the Lions only managing 115 batting first, with Thami Tsolekile scoring 58 of them. In reply, the Titans stumbled to 117 for six, winning by four wickets. “Something about that match just didn’t feel right from the beginning,” commented a Titans player afterwards.