It's mayhem on betting street as the `big bulls' have suffered the biggest ever loss in the illegal betting market with India and Pakistan marching into the final.
RAJPUR: It's mayhem on betting street as the `big bulls', or satta kings, have suffered the biggest ever loss in the illegal betting market with two cricket-mad nations - India and Pakistan - marching into the final of the Twenty20 World Championships in Johannesburg Monday.
Till Thursday night, when India knocked out hosts South Africa in last Group E league encounter of Super 8s stage, the net monetary loss for the big bulls was Rs.1.2 billion ($3 million).
It surged to Rs.2 billion Saturday night when Australia, the world number one in Tests and one-day internationals, was eliminated from the tournament.
"The India and Pakistan teams have been producing one shock after another in each encounter of the Twenty20. The shocks were bigger for a group of satta (betting) operators who were used to amassing billions of rupees through cricket betting in the Indian subcontinent since 1992 when Pakistan won the World Cup and satta began spreading to Indian cities from its Middle East base," a top betting market source said.
"We had started collecting money well ahead of the Twenty20 championship with a promise to pay four times the amount they staked if their favourites reached the semi-finals. The payout becomes five times if their team figures in the final and six times if they have backed the tournament winner. The losses are just going up with every encounter India and Pakistan are playing," the betting source stated.
He remarked: "The big bulls never thought these two nations would produce one stunner after another but surprisingly over 66,600 gamblers who placed bets worth over Rs.853 million for the tournament till the start of India-Australia semi-final clash Saturday seemed to have more faith in the teams from the subcontinent."
Chhattisgarh's state capital Raipur's Sadar Bazar along with Budhapara, Purani Basti, Chhotapara, Katoratalab and Ramsagarpara have emerged as favourite areas for the bookies, guided and controlled by the Middle East-based big bulls.
They run the betting market through a chain of collection centres set up over the past five years in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra's Vidarbha region, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh.
"The inaugural Twenty20 tournament will be known for mayhem in the big bulls street in central India as the two traditional Asian rivals, who made first round exits earlier this year from the World Cup in the West Indies, have brought an early Diwali for thousands of gamblers who were losing money consistently for the past several years," the source further said.
Police have hardly ever managed to track down big bulls in Raipur except in March 2005 when a global betting racket worth Rs.1 billion was busted at a private residence with arrest of three bookies ahead of an India-Pakistan Test at Mohali.
A series of raids were also conducted Saturday night during the India-Australia match and police arrested two satta operators from Sadar Bazar with a recorder, mobile phones and papers.
"Vijay Sharma and Abhisek Sharma, held for running a betting racket, are expected to disclose vital information about the large inter-state betting network here. We have recovered papers indicating Raipur betting market is in billions," Shashimohan Singh, city superintendent of police, Civil Lines, told journalists Sunday.
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