No Ball

Whispers, and then some progressively loud murmurs! Match fixing and illegal betting had begun to pervade the cricketing world. In 2000, when the much respected South African skipper, Hansie Cronje, was found guilty of match fixing soon after a trail of stars fell after the another. Prominent cricketers from India, South Africa, Kenya, England, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Pakistan, came out as fixers over the next decade. Life bans were handed out like sixes on no balls! The scandal really hit home in 2013, when spot-fixing allegations in the Indian Premier League resulted in the ouster of Indian and Rajasthan Royals bowler Sreesanth, along with two other players. This incident threw open the murky underworld connection – quite literally – in Indian cricket. For the first time, journalist Chandramohan Puppala traces cricket's biggest corruption back to the kingpin Dawood Ibrahim himself. Based on transcripts of police-recorded conversations and unpublished information about the players at the key of the storm, including some of India's biggest names, No Ball is a revealing account of the rot at the heart of Indian cricket.