It’s a story so crazy it seems destined for a Hollywood treatment. Several weeks ago, reports of a mysterious fake cricket league run out of a rural town in India captured worldwide attention. The fake league reportedly broadcast their matches on the internet, and purported to be legitimate matches from the Indian Premier League, the most lucrative cricket league in the world. To anyone with a passing familiarity with the game, it should have been obvious that something wasn’t right – because the actual IPL had concluded their season weeks earlier. But the target of the scam, according to police, were online bettors from countries like Russia, without a strong cricket tradition. Jarrod Kimber has been covering the sport for 15 years, and he explains how and why this scam happened…and why those who know cricket know this kind of thing is par for the course. 

You can find more of Jarrod Kimber’s cricket coverage on Patreon. 

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