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The man who blew the gaff on the big fix

Is Manoj Prabhakar an exposer of corruption or betrayer of friends? All India wants to know, writes Vivek Chaudhary

Monday 4 December 2000
The Guardian

Manoj Prabhakar is unlikely to go down in the annals of Indian cricket as one of the country's most prolific or cherished players. A gritty, combative all-rounder who, unusually, has opened both batting and bowling for his country, Prabhakar's Test record reads: matches 39, runs 1,600, wickets 96. In one-day internationals Prabhakar represented India 130 times, taking 157 wickets and scoring 1,858 runs.

As India's dream of a World Cup victory on home soil crumbled during the 1996 tournament with a semi-final defeat by Sri Lanka in Calcutta, so too did Prabhakar's international career. Soon after India lost the match the all-rounder was dropped by selectors, never to play for his country again, and he slipped out of the cricket scene to pursue a career in politics and business.

The retirement, however, was not to be the end of Prabhakar's contribution to Indian cricket and in recent months he has inadvertently made more of an impact on the game than he ever did with bat and ball.

As India's sordid and explosive match-fixing scandal has unfolded, implicating some of the country's and world's greatest cricketers, Prabhakar has emerged as chief whistle-blower in the affair who, singlehandedly, helped to expose the endemic corruption within the Indian game. It has cost him friends, made him public enemy No1 in some eyes and ultimately left him accused of taking bribes to fix matches.

Few outside India are aware of the role Prabhakar has played in exposing the match-fixing affair and the detailed and daring investigative journalism that went into bringing it into the public arena.

Wearing secret recording equipment and pinhole cameras, Prabhakar spent four weeks earlier this year touring the length and breadth of India, secretly taping meetings with former team-mates and friends such as Navjot Sidhu and Nayan Mongia, who were named in the Indian police report as being among a number of players involved with match-fixing.

Prabhakar, a popular figure in his playing days, had access to India's cricketing aristocracy and also recorded meetings with Indian cricket officials and some of the country's former greats such as Bishen Bedi, Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri, none of whom are under suspicion.

Assisted by Aniruddha Bahal, who was one of the first Indian journalists to break the story of match-fixing in 1997 in the Indian magazine Outlook, Prabhakar accumulated more than 40 hours of taped conversations. The two men travelled around India together but Prabhakar went to the meetings alone.

The result of Prabhakar's clandestine work is a 90-minute documentary entitled Fallen Heroes: The Betrayal of a Nation, which was released in India in May. At the same time details of the story also appeared on, an Indian news internet site for whom Bahal now works. It sent shockwaves through the country. Until then, few Indian cricket officals had publicly admitted to match-fixing but the sting orchestrated by Prabhakar and Bahal proved to be the catalyst for the subsequent Indian police investigation that found some of the country's leading cricketers guilty of match-fixing.

A book also entitled Fallen Heroes, which gives details of the investigation and transcripts of the meetings, has also been published and is due to be released in Britain next week along with the video.

The documentary, shot entirely with hidden camera footage, reveals the existence of match-fixing in India and that it was common knowledge to all involved in the game for many years. Some of the greatest names in Indian cricket, including Gavaskar, Bedi, Mongia and More as well as officals from the Indian cricket board, can be seen and heard talking about links between players and bookmakers, matches being thrown in return for cash, mysterious run-outs and the names of players allegedly involved in match-fixing.

The CBI, India's federal police, used the 40 hours of footage as evidence in its own inquiry, which found some of the country's leading cricketers guilty of fixing games.

Prabhakar's involvement in the scandal can be traced back to 1997, when he wrote in Outlook that he was offered 2.5m rupees (£38,000) by a former team-mate to underperform in a match against Pakistan in Colombo in 1994. Prabhakar refused to name the alleged player at the time and the whole of India engaged in a frenzied guessing game as to who offered the bribe.

It was around this time that Prabhakar became close friends and a vital source for Bahal, who continued to write about match-fixing in India. The problem that both found, however, was that, when it came to this subject, there were plenty of "deep throats" but little hard evidence.

Prabhakar was talked into secretly taping conversations with his cricket friends by Bahal and Tarun Tejpal, editor in chief of after the Hansie Cronje affair broke in India in late March. Two other former Indian Test cricketers were asked to take part in the elaborate sting operation but both refused.

Bahal said: "The Cronje affair gave fresh impetus to the match-fixing story. There had been a lot of rumours flying around about match-fixing but the problem was that every time there was an inquiry we had officials from cricket standing up publicy saying that they did not know about it. We needed an insider, someone who had the confidence of the cricketers so they would talk openly about match-fixing and, of course, we needed the evidence to show that they knew about it.

"Manoj has shown a lot of guts. He has lost a lot of his friends, many people feel that he has betrayed them. But, if it had not been for Manoj, match-fixing would have remained hidden. You have to take your hat off to him."

Tejpal said: "It was not that easy convincing Manoj to take part in the secret filming. There were days when he would become very depressed and wondered if he was doing the right thing. It was very brave of Manoj; he has burnt a lot of bridges . . . but cricket owes him a great deal."

Even the impact of Prabhakar's documentary was little compared with that at the end of May when he named the player who allegedly offered him that bribe in Colombo. In an interview with Bahal Prabhakar claimed it was none other than Kapil Dev, who is to Indian cricket what Maradona is to Argentine football.

Prabhakar's allegation sent almost the entire nation into a state of disbelief, damning him for dragging the doyen into the swamp of match-fixing.

Dev was eventually cleared by the CBI of match-fixing, with officials claiming they could find no evidence against the former captain. Instead they named Prabhakar as one of several Indian players who had taken money for fixing matches.

Since the documentary Prabhakar has received a number of death threats and has been shunned by his cricket friends. His supporters claim that whether he was involved in match-fixing or not is irrelevant because, ultimately, what he did was lift the lid on the most damaging scandal ever to hit the game. For that, they protest, he deserves credit.

"Even if Manoj was involved, as the CBI says, what difference does that make? We knew about match-fixing but needed evidence to prove it. Now we have it and all because of the bravery of one man - Manoj Prabhakar," said Bahal.

•Fallen Heroes: The Inside Story of a Nation Betrayed

(Buffalo Books).

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