It seems that nothing can remain untouched these days. It’s all about money and that doesn’t change with the India- Pakistan cricket World Cup semifinal scheduled for 2 days’ time. Indeed there have already been three arrests by the Chandigarh police for attempts being made to “black-market” tickets for the event. The mark-up was somewhat absurd; on a ticket of Rs.250 and Rs.500, sales were pitched at Rs.56,000!

It was a little much. The police set up a trap to catch them and it worked. Now there is an interrogation taking place to determine exactly what happened and to make an example out of these people to perhaps deter people from trying this trick in the future.

Making Money on the Winning Team

These money-seekers might have tried to make their dough in a more traditional way, as has been done since time immemorial with hedging bets on which team will win. Is this so easy to do? Well, if you look at what has happened in the past between the two teams you will find that from the 199 matches played between the two in world cup matches, India has a 4-0 lead over Pakistan. While this makes for seemingly good news for those who want to place bets, you can never really tell and that is what makes such a gamble so exciting as it could go either way.

Whatever happens on Wednesday, let’s hope no one else gets arrested and greed doesn’t get in the way too much of what is ultimately meant to be a lot of good, sporting fun and no match-fixing occurs which is, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, a fear of Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik, due to what some players from his country did last year in what became known as the “spot-fixing” scandal.