India: How a fake 'IPL' cricket league ran for Russian punters

Chennai Fighters are chasing a score of 151 set by Gandhinagar Challengers. The outfield is brown and dusty, and the cricket pitch is a whitish carpet nailed to the ground. Strokes are sometimes played but we never see a ball reach the boundary.

Cricket match is being played on a barren patch of land. Chennai Fighters are chasing a score of 151 set by Gandhinagar Challengers. The Chennai team is scoring at a steady clip of nearly seven runs an over. Four men were arrested for staging a fake cricket tournament in Mehsana district of Gujarat and accepting bets from punters from three Russian cities. There is often a lot of illegal gambling in cricket. India hosts the Indian Premier League (IPL). Some states have their own franchise-model local leagues modelled on the lines of IPL. Joy Bhattacharjya, a sports producer and a former director of an IPP team, says fake leagues are run for illegal betting.