Unbelievable

We’ve all heard of IPL. It’s unlikely though that you’d have heard of the Century Hitters T20 League. It had 6 teams from different Indian states, with names like Chennai Fighters and Gandhinagar Challengers, writes Soutik Biswas:

“The outfield is brown and dusty, and the cricket pitch is a whitish carpet nailed to the ground.”

Two HD cameras beamed the matches on a YouTube channel. The screen included the usual info: score, run rate, projected score, required run rate, the batsmen and bowler’s names.

 

Inevitably, there was betting on the matches. From Russia, of all places!

“Except this was part of what the police call a "fake" cricket tournament involving a group of unemployed men in Gujarat.”

All for punters from Russia to place bets.

 

The “players” were farmers and unemployed locals who were paid 400 rupees a game. They wore jerseys of the kind seen in the IPL. As this other article said:

“They were commented by a person who could do a very good impersonation of Indian commentator Harsha Bhogle. Crowd-noise sound effects were used to add authenticity to the broadcast, and the cameramen made sure to mostly shoot close-ups of the players, avoiding showing the empty fields around the pitch.”

 

And finally, the “umpires” with walkie-talkies (just as IPL umpires do) would then be told by the mysterious mastermind to instruct the players to do whatever would cause the betters to lose money!

“Crime is a crime and should be treated as such, but you have to admit that this one is pretty darn impressive.”