Adapted from BOOKIE GAMBLER FIXER SPY: A JOURNEY TO THE CORRUPT HEART OF CRICKET'S UNDERWORLD by Ed Hawkins, to be published by Bloomsbury on November 15
‘Chezza,' I called out. ‘I think you'd better have a look at this. A bookie has messaged me. He's sent me a script of what is going to happen.'
‘Oh, this is extraordinary! Let me read it… oh good God! How many have India got?'
India are approaching 260. At the start of the final over they are 256 for seven. Bowled by Wahab Riaz, it goes dot ball-wicket-single-single-wicket-two. India close on 260. Cherrene is beside herself. I urge calm. ‘Hang on a sec, he said more than 260. The proof will be when Pakistan bat.'
‘Oh, this is amazing!'
"Indeed it was. Parthiv had been correct twice previously when he had messaged with information about a fix during a game. But he had not sent anything as detailed as this. I checked the scorecard. He was wrong about India losing three wickets in the first 15 overs and his prediction was out by a single run for a total of more than 260. This would be enough to exonerate India from wrongdoing.
"The information for Pakistan's innings was more thorough… ‘pak will cruise to 100, then lose 2 quick wickets, at 150 they will be 5 down and crumble and lose by a margin of over 20 runs'. Had this been received from anyone other than an Indian bookmaker it would be considered a wild guess.
"I email two gambling associates, including Geoffrey Riddle, a journalist, sharing Parthiv's script and telling them that I expect Pakistan's innings to unfold exactly as he said. Parthiv had form, I write, for accuracy.
"Ever since that message from Parthiv I have fretted over whether it could have been a lucky guess. I asked Jatin Thakkar, a Mumbai-based statistician, to search his database, which stretched back to December 1992, to reveal the likelihood of predicting Pakistan's innings to such detail.
"His results proved that if Parthiv had made it up, then he was on the kind of lucky streak which demanded the purchase of a lottery scratchcard. Such a sequence — ‘Pakistan cruise to 100, lose 2 quick wickets, at 150 they will be 5 down and crumble and lose by a margin of over 20 runs' — is rare over the study period. Jatin explained his method: ‘I took matches in which a team was chasing 250 to 280 and then applied the match situations that Pakistan's chase went through in the exact manner.'
"It has happened six times in the 2,434 matches. As a percentage, this is 0.24650780608052586. Translated into odds, it is a 405–1 against shot.
To put this into context, a hat-trick is a 106–1 chance, a five-wicket haul is 8–1 and a century 11–2. This is not impossible, by any stretch of the imagination, but a long chance nonetheless.
"The responses I receive are laden with expletives, expressing dismay that there could be any doubt about a World Cup semi-final between two such bitter rivals. Both of them, of course, tell me they have placed big wagers on India to go on to win the match. Feelings of excitement at the start of the match have morphed into nerves, dread and bewilderment. Cherrene is tense, too. She sits forward on the sofa, knees together and holding a cushion to her chest. She says she hopes that Parthiv's message proves to be wrong.
