The International Cricket Council’s anti-corruption branch is investigating the role of Indian bookies and betting cartels in the Ajman All Stars Twenty20 league, in which cricketers were found to be throwing their wickets away in a suspicious manner.

According to a report in The Indian Express, the ICC’s investigators have found links between the organisers of the UAE-based tournament and small cricket leagues organised in Jaipur and Kota, which had come under the scanner of the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s anti-corruption unit last year.

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Over a dozen people were arrested in Jaipur last year in overnight raids for alleged spot-fixing and betting links in the local Rajputana Premier League. The third umpire in the tournament relayed messages from the bookies to the on-field officials via a walkie-talkie, investigators found.

The on-field umpires then instructed the players to do what the bookies asked. Most of the teams participating in the league had club-level cricketers who were picked by bookies and middlemen, the report said. The modus operandi was similar to the one seen in the Ajman league, the report added.

“The ICC has contacted us with regard to an India connection and there are persons of interest,” the BCCI’s anti-corruption chief, Neeraj Kumar, told the daily. “The list of people [on our radar] who organise such leagues, which are corrupted, has further swollen up after the Ajman league. The ICC is investigating the India angle. If they want our help to carry out certain investigations, they will let us know. In fact, my own sense is that in most of the leagues happening abroad the corruptors are from India (sic).”

The ICC had earlier confirmed that it will investigate the private cricket tournament in the UAE for “corrupt practices” despite the league not coming under the radar of the Emirates Cricket Board or the international cricket governing body. The league was called off on its second day after local cricket authorities refused to allow its conduct. The venue, the Ajman Oval, was also suspended with immediate effect.