Fighting sinister forces of f pitch

CRICKET Australia has reinstated a crucial integrity job it slashed during Covid to bolster its assault on corruption amid an explosion of betting on the women’s game.

Since the advent of the Women’s Big Bash League in 2015-16, cricket insiders say betting on women’s cricket has increased at a stunning rate of 800 per cent year on year.

Bookmakers estimate women’s cricket has become the most wagered on women’s sport in the world behind the well-established WNBA basketball and Grand Slam tennis, and it’s not unusual for a regular game of WBBL to now trade in excess of $10m on a betting exchange like Betfair.

There are more than 1000 betting outlets internationally where punters can bet on matches at the current women’s World Cup in New Zealand – but also countless illegal betting rings operating mainly out of the subcontinent.

With women’s cricketers largely underpaid compared with their male counterparts – particularly overseas where the tentacles of the game’s seedy underbelly spread wide – integrity experts fear women’s cricket (along with underage cricket) has become the biggest risk area when it comes to anti-corruption.

Cricket Australia is beefing up its resources to handle the threat by advertising for a new Integrity Analyst to join its team headed up by head of integrity Jacqui Partridge.

Eyebrows were raised at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 when Cricket Australia made the key intelligence gathering position redundant as part of 40 job cuts across the board.

By doing so, industry insiders felt CA had reduced its capacity to protect the game.

The Sunday Territorian understands CA has in recent years had more reports of suspicious approaches made to women’s cricketers – especially in the WBBL – than it has in men’s cricket. That’s why the Integrity Analyst is considered a vital weapon in monitoring betting patterns.