Exotic fears
Leading bookmaker Alan Eskander has voiced fears that Cricket Australia’s crackdown on the game’s exotic bets could drive the demand for that market underground.
Where’s a grain of salt when you need one?
No doubt Eskander has fears arising from this crackdown — fears of losing all that lovely mug money.
What a rich income stream must be provided by people so bored or addicted that they’re prepared to bet on whether there will be three, four or five runs scored off the next over.
Presumably if such markets are outlawed, Joe Public — desperate to wager on whether Billy Bloggs or Charlie Farley will be next to fall — will be forced to patronise the shady-looking man lurking in the corner of the front bar.
It’s unlikely, however, that the pub SP will be taking $10,000 at 12-1 from the left-arm spinner’s cousin about the spinner "accidentally" overstepping on the third ball of his fifth over. So Cricket Australia probably won’t be too worried.
Eskander’s fears seem to me eerily similar to the tobacco industry’s deep concern that plain-packaging laws will force smokers to buy dangerous black-market gaspers.
To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, "He would say that, wouldn’t he?"
Castlemaine (Vic)