Australian Open: Spaniards blame injury for loss after doubles betting alert

'We saw a small number of people placing a large amount of money'

Fernando Verdasco, right, and David Marrero, who said he had a knee injury (Getty)

The players in a mixed doubles match here at the Australian Open which aroused suspicions when it attracted unusual patterns of betting have denied that it was fixed.

The New York Times reported yesterday that Pinnacle Sports, a major gambling website, had suspended betting on Sunday’s match between the Spaniards Lara Arruabarrena and David Marrero and the Czech Republic’s Andrea Hlavackova and Lukasz Kubot of Poland. Almost all the money had gone on Hlavackova and Kubot, who won 6-0, 6-3.

The newspaper said that in an interview after their defeat Arruabarrena and Marrero had rejected any possibility that the match had been fixed. Marrero said that a knee injury had been a factor in their loss.

Kubot said yesterday that he had not noticed anything unusual on the court. “We give 100 per cent,” he said, adding that the Spaniards were also “trying 100 per cent”.

Pinnacle Sports notified the police here of possible irregularities. Marco Blume, one of the betting company’s executives, was reported to have told The New York Times: “We saw a small number of people placing a large amount of money. In context, these matches are rather small. That means that any aggressive betting behaviour is very easy to detect on our side.”

However, William Hill said it had seen no suspicious betting on the match, having taken fewer than five small bets on it, while Betfair confirmed that it had also kept betting on the match open.

The Tennis Integrity Unit, which was set up by the governing bodies of tennis to combat match-fixing, is understood to have interviewed the four players. The TIU said it would never comment on an individual case but confirmed that its policy was to investigate every allegation of corruption.

Meanwhile, Nick Lindahl, a former top 200 player, pleaded guilty in a Sydney court to a match-fixing charge. The Australian admitted telling two people that he was going to lose a match in a Futures tournament so that they could profit by betting on it.