Cricket: Welcome to the grubby world of M K Gupta

DELHI - At the end of a week in which his revelations to India's Central Bureau of Investigation shook international cricket to its foundations, the Indian bookmaker Mukesh Gupta, alias M. K. and known to most of his foreign friends as plain "John," yesterday remained as mysterious as ever.

Ten years ago he gave up his job as a clerk in India's Syndicate Bank and began dabbling in the diamond trade.

In 1996 he paid South African captain Hansie Cronje $50,000 to make sure that, in Cronje's words, "no miracles occurred" when South Africa went out to bat in a losing position during the third test against India.

Today, he has a jewellery business in a chaotic, booming south Delhi shopping district, South Extension, and recently moved into a grandiose new home built in the style known as "Punjabi Baroque" in an expensive residential area nearby.

He was born in 1960. According to his father, K. M. Lall, aged 79, who was cornered by a Delhi journalist back in June, he likes to watch cricket on television but never visits cricket grounds to watch the sport live.

Together, his two properties may be worth 500 million rupees ($26.7 million), though his father says they are worth half that sum.

But Gupta, whose admissions form the backbone of the CBI's report, including the allegation that he paid England's former captain Alec Stewart £5000 ($17,800) for "information," has yet to talk to the press directly, and the world of Indian cricket betting which he inhabits remains profoundly murky.

It is completely illegal and enormously popular. The CBI said in its report that it was likely to be taken over by India's most ruthless crime syndicates "if not checked immediately."

But a handful of Indian bookies have come out of the shadows, suitably clad in aliases, to explain how it works.

In Delhi alone there are said to be 1000 cricket bookmakers, ranging from the M. K. Guptas who, when matches are in progress, base themselves in the suites of five-star hotels and will not take bets worth less than 50,000 rupees ($26,700), to their poor relations operating from parked cars or slum shanties, who are open to offers of 2000 rupees ($107) and above.

Only punters who have been personally introduced are accepted.

All betting is done by phone, with calls recorded in case punters try to back out of paying, and bets entered by the bookmaker in a notebook which is later destroyed.

New customers must pay in advance in cash until they gain the bookie's trust.

With trusted customers, no money changes hands until the game is over.

During a match, the operations of the plusher bookies in their hotel suites resemble the backroom of a busy betting office, with dozens of phones ringing and the odds fluctuating from moment to moment.

Punters keep abreast of the odds by means of pagers and mobiles.

Cricket has long been the subcontinent's obsession.

Now betting on it has become the region's secret addiction.

And the knowledge that many of the matches have been rigged is unlikely to change that.

- INDEPENDENT