BPL 2017: Dirk Nannes Reveals Shocking Details of Spot-Fixing

With the cricketing world rocked by recent allegations of spot-fixing, former Australia speedster Dirk Nannes has opened up about his experiences with spot-fixing in the Bangladesh Premier League.

English news outlet The Sun carried out a sting operation in which two Indian men claimed they influence the third Ashes Test in Perth and also offered to provide details regarding the rigged periods of play. The two men reportedly asked the newspaper’s undercover reporters for up to £140,000 (USD187,000) to fix the game and also insisted they were working with a fixer in Australia known as the Silent Man.

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And with the ICC desperate to curb the menace, Nannes has given a little bit of insight on how the fixing takes place.

“The Bangladesh Premier League, that was the interesting one,” Nannes told ABC Radio on Friday (December 15). “The first time there were owners who’d come along. The owners weren’t allowed on the ground, but there would be a team manager going to the owner and saying, ‘What are we doing next’, then going to the coach. The security guys were saying enough was enough. But it just kept going on. The owners were sitting there on the phone. The owners were demanding that they be in constant touch with the coach because that’s why they bought the team.

“There were a few games I watched on television when I played in the Bangladesh Premier League, and you could hear the players on the ground yelling at the batsman because you saw it was flat-out wrong. The security guys knew it, the guys on the ground knew it, everybody knew it,” he added.

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Nannes, who played in one One-Day International and 17 Twenty20 Internationals for Australia, further revealed how the security personnel could not do anything despite knowing about the bookies in the crowd.

“The spotters were people up in the crowd,” Nannes said. “They’d have a microphone in the cuff of their shirt, and ten mobile phones around their waist. Anytime something happened, they’d lift their sleeve and speak into the microphone, and have time to do whatever they were doing. Security couldn’t do anything except kick them out. Actually, in Bangladesh, they couldn’t even do that.”

Nannes, however, said he was unaware of such practices in Australia, stating:

“I may be being naive, because, from my opinion, everyone I played with in Australia has always gone 100 percent to win the game.

“You’re talking about those satellite tournaments where there’s not as much professionalism is in the game. We talk about that Sunstory, some of the Australian players are getting five million or more. They’re talking about 60 grand? Then you’ve got to split it. [Players] would never go anywhere near that,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Cricket Board had launched a series of police raids in this year’s tournament in an attempt to curb illegal betting in cricket stadiums. The league started in February 2012 on the lines of the highly successful Indian Premier League, but it did not go ahead on the desired lines, as it was dogged by betting allegations since its inaugural edition with players and team-owners also being involved in malpractices.

Also Read: The Ashes 2017/18: Series In Australia Rocked By Spot-Fixing Allegations, ICC Launches Probe

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