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NEW DELHI: Former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi has claimed that match-fixing continues to exist in cricket, though he stopped short of making any allegations against the Indian Premier League (IPL), saying the tournament has become too lucrative for players to risk their careers.Modi, who has been residing primarily in London since leaving India in May 2010, spoke on a range of subjects during Wisden Cricket’s podcast The Scoop, including corruption and match-fixing in cricket.When asked whether fixing still exists in the IPL, Modi said corruption in the sport has evolved and become increasingly sophisticated.“They’re fixing in cricket. It has gone to a very sophisticated level. Whether it’s in the IPL, I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t know. And I can’t tell you because I genuinely don’t know. But I’m sure it exists everywhere; every sport has its issues. I can’t give you a yes-or-no answer, to tell you the truth. And I would like you to play all of this. Don’t cut out this portion because otherwise people will take it the wrong way. Because I’m telling you very clearly: I do not know,” Modi said.The former IPL chief, however, said he does not believe fixing is prevalent in the IPL because of the vast sums of money involved in the tournament.“I don’t think it would be happening in the IPL because the money has become so big. It is so big that there is no reason for players to fix because they have too much to lose,” he added.Modi instead pointed to smaller domestic and regional leagues as being more vulnerable to corruption due to a lack of governance and oversight.“But I can tell you for a fact that in many of the smaller leagues, you will see games being manipulated. Not in the main leagues, but in the smaller leagues, and especially in the bachha leagues, it’s all about fixing. You’ll see so many entrepreneurs launching these small inter-city leagues, inter-area leagues and interstate leagues. There is no corporate governance there. There is nothing out there. You don’t even see television coverage. It’s all about satta baazi,” Modi said.“And if you look at the satta baazi market today, it’s massive. If you have Rs 40,000 crore being bet per day — not per season, per day — and you have 100 games, it’s a $40 billion industry in cricket alone, a number nobody is talking about. It is huge, and something that huge tends to have problems,” he said.“Cricket lends itself to ball-by-ball betting, with odds changing every delivery. For lack of a better word, that’s the reality. And the smaller leagues are toxic. Very toxic,” Modi said.
