The Tamil Nadu Premier League has run into troubled waters with a couple of first-class cricketers and coaches coming under the BCCI Anti-Corruption Unit’s scanner for suspected match-fixing.
The Tamil Nadu Cricket Association on Monday then said it has appointed a committee to look into the matter.
Now, police sources say that they discovered information about a possible betting racket while investigating the suicide of former Indian national cricketer and TNPL team owner VB Chandrasekhar. Police were investigating some of VB’s close friends and cricketers in the state following his suicide, said a report in The Times of India.
“Though those were not directly related to the suicide case, we recorded some of the important facts and passed on to our colleagues in Mumbai and Delhi,” a senior police officer was quoted as saying.
The 57-year-old died last month in what was suspected to be suicide prompted by worries about debt, police said. He owned a Tamil Nadu Premier League team, the VB Kanchi Veerans, and also ran a cricket academy, VB’s Nest, in Velachery.
According to a report in the Indian Express on Monday, bookies and match-fixers have taken control of a TNPL franchise through an illegal deal with the team owner and people linked to bookies are now spreading in different teams.
The BCCI’s ACU chief Ajit Singh, however, ruled out the possibility of any international player being a suspect. The ACU confirmed that none of the team owners are being investigated as well.
“No players or team owners are being investigated. There were certain players who were approached and they reported it to us. On the basis of what they’ve told us, we’re trying to find out who are the people who approached the players. The fact that the players have reported these approaches doesn’t mean that there’s an investigation against them,” ACU chief Ajit Singh told The Times of India.
The TNPL, owned by the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, started in 2016 and features eight franchises.