Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy, By Ed Hawkins

Ed Hawkins has already won the 2013 Wisden Cricket Book of the Year Award, and on Wednesday is aiming to do the double, as his investigation into cricket corruption is shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year.

It seems appropriate that a book about bookies is in contention for the Bookie Award, and it is there entirely on merit. Hawkins has two advantages over many of those who have pronounced on the canker of match-fixing: he travelled to India to talk to illegal bookmakers; and as a specialist betting journalist he understands the mathematics, and can spot a suspicious shift in odds at 50 paces.

His most astonishing revelation concerns the India v Pakistan 2011 World Cup semi-final in Mumbai. One of his bookmaker contacts tweeted him a “script” of how the game would unfold: “India will bat first and score over 260, 3 wickets fall within the first 15 overs, pak will cruise to 100, then lose two quick wickets, at 150 they will be 5 down and crumble and lose by a margin of over 20 runs.” The tweet was disturbingly if not totally accurate, and later number-crunching indicated that the odds of a game following that pattern were 405-1, but the International Cricket Council said they had “no reason or evidence” to investigate it.

Closer to home, Hawkins queries the conviction of the Pakistan cricketers involved in the 2010 News of the World sting and, more worryingly, suggests that the increased televising of English county cricket in South-East Asia and the Middle East represents a clear and present danger. Most of the evidence Hawkins rehearses is ultimately circumstantial, but a chill runs down the spine when he quotes a big Delhi punter as saying: “I know one county player who had £100,000 deposited into a Dubai account. He had a big party.”