It is 30 minutes into the men's Hundred derby between London Spirit and MI London at Lord's and a husband and wife have been spotted in the stands.
They were at Lord's earlier in the week for the visit of Southern Brave, and at Edgbaston's T20 Blast Finals Day. On both occasions they were ejected from the ground by anti-corruption officers. This balmy Thursday evening is no different.
The pair were providing live in-ground commentary to a third party outside the ground for gambling purposes. The delay between the live action and the broadcast - as long as 12 seconds in some cases - allows bettors to get ahead of the betting markets. Sending information like this from the ground, a practice known as pitch-siding or court-siding, is commonplace, and though not illegal, contravenes ground regulations, and if caught, results in ejection.
Some pitch-siders operate for themselves. But this couple's relaying of live information further afield was identified as a familiar sharp practice used by illegal gambling networks. Venue-wide bans are usually issued for such offenders but at Lord's the two were able to circumvent the rules using third-party tickets.
"There is a difference between those that are in and trading for themselves - it's how they make money. [That's] not part of the ground regulations," says Ryan Smith, head of integrity operations at the Cricket Regulator, a body that monitors compliance with the game's regulations, and enforcement and adherence to those regulations. It also provides information and education for those under the umbrella of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
"Those that are actively commentating to outside illicit gambling networks - that's more of a problem," Smith says. "That's more of an integrity risk for the game because you've got individuals who are involved, essentially, in an organised criminal network that oversees illicit gambling."
Smith heads a team of nine dedicated full-time investigators at the Regulator, alongside six anti-corruption officers. The organisation, established in December 2023, is headed by director Chris Haward, who spent 34 years in the police force, where he rose to national chief constable lead for serious and organised crime.
Though the Regulator is overseen by an independent Cricket Regulatory Board, it is funded by the ECB, which also works as a messenger, relaying any findings from investigations the Regulator undertakes. The Regulator uses standalone IT systems, and enjoys an overall level of privacy that has ultimately led to many within the game questioning what the body actually does.
The highest-profile framing of the Regulator came earlier this summer, and probably best sums up its position within the ecosystem. After Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson were reprimanded by the ECB for for breaking a team curfew at the end of England's first Test against New Zealand, the Regulator investigated and found insufficient evidence to establish any regulatory breach. It essentially outlined that the midnight curfew the two players were supposed to have breached had not been officially ratified. It was only when the Regulator passed on its evidence to the ECB for the board's own internal investigation that Stokes and Atkinson were deemed guilty of breaching "specific contractual obligations" and handed written warnings.
That case fell under the ambit of "Misconduct", the policing of which is one of the four pillars of the Regulator's investigation branch.
"Safeguarding" is another, a high-priority one, where most of the investigating resource goes. This particularly deals with those who have committed an offence outside of cricket that should preclude their participation in the game, especially at recreational level. This includes, for example, people with a role in club cricket who have been arrested for possession and/or distribution of indecent images.
"Anti-doping" is a third area, which deals with supplements and medications coming on and off UK Anti-Doping's banned list. Ongoing education is a part of the Regulator's charter in this area.
The last pillar is "anti-corruption" which, much like anti-doping, focuses strongly on player awareness. This is arguably the area most in focus during this window of the summer, in the drive to keep the Hundred clean.
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The ECB's flagship competition has led to a steep rise in the sums wagered on English cricket. Last season, over £4 billion (about US$5.2b) was staked on domestic cricket alone.
The 2025 Blast had, on average, £6.7 million ($8.7m) staked per match, with a high of £48m ($62.4m) on one fixture. An average of £30m ($39m) was bet per game in the Hundred (men's and women), which is played in a window when there is little other cricket in England to bet on. The highest for a single game was a whopping £101m ($131.3m).
This season, the average sum staked on Hundred matches has risen to £33.5m ($45.3m), matching last year's peak with Spirit-Invincibles at Lord's. The women's Eliminator between Sunrisers Leeds and Southern Brave brought £50m ($67.6m) compared to £33m ($44.6m) in the final, a one-sided affair won by Trent Rockets. The men's eliminator - Manchester Super Giants versus Sunrisers - also saw more money than the final, with £74m ($100.1m) staked compared to £68m ($92m), though over £1m ($1.35m) was matched on the tie as MSG stuttered to the finish line.
All of the above figures are from just one legal platform, and these sums are not solely from bets placed in the UK. As for illicit gambling markets, that figure is, of course, unknowable.
Smith, who has been with the Regulator since its inception, and spent 20 years investigating transnational organised crime before it, including smuggling and money-laundering offences, estimates overall figures are likely a third bigger.
"My experience working against organised crime is that when you've got a market that big, it's very attractive if you want to infiltrate and make a big profit."
It is worth noting that 2025's domestic betting total was driven up by the World Championship of Legends series, which ran from the middle of July to the start of August. The pull on bettors was such that 15 pitch-siders were ejected during one game at Leicestershire's Grace Road.
Pitch-siders are perhaps the lowest-hanging fruit as far as anti-corruption is concerned. The Hundred takes place at Test venues, so in-ground CCTV cameras are a valuable tool, assisting anti-corruption officers patrolling on foot, looking for those acting suspiciously - looking at their phones constantly, talking into headphones when they're alone. These are usually men, though that has changed in recent times. Those caught commentating are immediately banned from all ECB venues for 12 months in the first instance.
Sometimes anti-corruption staff get tip-offs from people sitting near potential perpetrators, and it is not uncommon for one pitch-sider to be reported by another to protect their patch. In the case of the husband and wife mentioned earlier, they had made the mistake of sitting in front of a CCTV camera on their previous trip to Lord's. They were first spotted by the ground's dedicated control room, stationed deep in the newly renovated Warner Stand. Anti-corruption officers have found that ejections often lead to another person entering the ground on a ticket as a replacement.
Pitch-siders offer clues to the changing nature of illicit gambling. Some are recruited by overseas syndicates, and are sometimes students looking for extra cash, getting a match ticket and a nominal fee for their "work" in grounds.
Some are genuinely unaware what they are doing is forbidden, and are often forthcoming with information on how they were recruited and by whom. This gets logged and passed on to the ICC's anti-corruption and security unit (ACSU), which has jurisdiction on international matches played in England and Wales, and often leases its anti-corruption officials to oversee T20 leagues around the world. Information is also shared with other governing bodies and relevant authorities, building a better picture of the various networks to combat.
The devices used to relay messages or put instant bets on speak to growing technological advancement. Investigators have confiscated repurposed mobile phones and even games-console controllers. When one live commentator was busted, they were found to be broadcasting via a fake pizza-delivery app on their phone.
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It is not in the stands but on the field that things matter most as far as keeping the game and its players clean goes. Though the spot-fixing scandal during Pakistan's tour of England in 2010 remains fresh in the memory - Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt were found guilty of conspiring to deliberately bowl no-balls on demand - more common is the corrupt practice of engineering innings to ensure the score is over or under a set figure at a certain point in the innings. "It's 'What will the score be at the six-over line?' and so on," Smith says.
"You still might end up winning the game even though you've put a fix in on behalf of the criminal organisation you're working for. So that's obviously what we're alive to. That's why we monitor the market."
During domestic matches, especially in the Hundred, where liquidity is high, investigators will monitor betting markets, along with external integrity companies, to ensure the market is behaving in line with the flow of the match, as determined by a sophisticated algorithm. Betting companies are also as vigilant and engage regularly with the ECB and the Regulator.
For instance, in a fixture between evenly matched teams, alarm bells will ring if, say, the market shows that 80% of the money has gone to one side in the early stages, and especially so if there is a large swing backing one side against the run of play.
This has not happened in a Hundred match to date, but in the event that one or more do, investigators use a sliding scale that grades the level of suspicion from 1 to 5, with 5 warranting approaching a player at the end of the game - as much to check on their safety as to ensure, say, that they do not regain access to their phones and delete incriminating messages.
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Prevention is better than cure, and anti-corruption is no different.
The ECB ensures the players under its care are spoken to at the start of the season by the Regulator and the Professional Cricketers' Association (PCA), and that the message is reinforced when Hundred squads gather - along with a designated anti-corruption officer who travels with them throughout the tournament. Overseas players who arrive midway through are also kept up to speed, not least because different countries and tournaments have different regulations.
Player restrictions to do with anti-corruption are well-known, particularly after high-profile cases in the last six years involving Brydon Carse and Chris Wood, who were handed bans for betting on cricket (Wood received a suspended two-month ban). Betting on any cricket is strictly prohibited, as is providing inside information.
Players hand over their devices as soon as they enter the players-and-match-officials areas (PMOA - a cordoned off space to prevent outside "contamination"). Smart eyeglasses and smart watches are also included, and are kept in a secure briefcase before handed back to the players at the end of matches.
An interesting development this year has been that these regulations have been reinforced to new franchise owners. IPL owners, to use one example, are used to roaming about as they please, even entering the dressing room while matches are underway. In the Hundred, they need the appropriate accreditation and are shorn of their devices as and when they do enter a restricted area. Evidently, a collective £500m investment does not include uninhibited access.
It is also impressed on players that they need to report all approaches, however sceptical they may be that they qualify as suspicious, including those via social media; take a screenshot of anything they are uncertain of and report immediately.
"Anything that doesn't smell right, any random message you get in the middle of the night, even if it's not clearly linked to gambling, just send it to us," says Smith. "We can review it and then advise the player accordingly - on block and delete, and we'll take this forward."
Last year, more players were subject to such approaches than ever before, though the Regulator acknowledges this may be because players are more vigilant and are reporting more approaches.
As a result, they have been able to narrow approaches down to three distinct types.
An in-game fix. This often takes the form of a lone-wolf bettor getting in contact with a specific request for an upcoming match, promising a share of the profits in return.
The franchise promise. A player will receive a message informing them of a great franchise deal in the offing. In one example, seen by Cricinfo, a player was up for the "opportunity" and took the conversation to WhatsApp to loop in their agent, before another number contacted them purporting to be the franchise team's owner. They outlined a series of fixes to be undertaken, failing which the deal would be voided. A handful of these approaches were reported over the winter. Smith says this type of approach is the biggest risk.
The Imposter. The most common approach, with around 30 reports this year alone. A player will receive a message from someone pretending to be a former cricketer they might know. Often a request for a list of phone numbers follows - in one case, of high-profile England internationals - claiming the person who is texting has lost their contacts. Most players sense something is not quite right, but there have been occasions when the phone numbers of cricketers shared are subject to more blatantly corrupt approaches.
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The rise of women's cricket in the UK, and the higher billing offered by the Hundred, has seen a dramatic increase in betting on the women's game, with all its threats.
Even with six-figure paydays at the auctions, female cricketers still earn a fraction of what their male counterparts do. As such, they are more vulnerable to corrupt approaches. The ECB, the Regulator and the PCA reinforce this in their messaging to head any issues off at the pass.
An area where women have become particularly more susceptible is abusive messages. This year alone, the Regulator has had reports of over 200 such; not only have the majority been targeted at female cricketers, but it has been ascertained that the messages come from those who have lost money punting on the women's game.
By and large, female cricketers are more active on social media, as much for themselves as due to the directive from above to be their own ambassadors for women's cricket at a time when it is thriving in the UK. The offshoot is that they become bigger targets.
The Regulator has engaged a third-party company, Signify, for open-source investigations into such abuse. Signify engages with Meta and other platforms to get accounts banned and make directly contacting cricketers harder. It also offers teams and players protective screening, allowing for the interception of messages before they reach the player.
Even beyond the bright lights of the Hundred, domestic women's cricket has found itself becoming a vessel for "fund passing" - a form of money-laundering. Last year, a 50-over fixture between Sussex and Gloucestershire had £154,041 ($200,000) placed on it via a betting exchange two days before the game was due to take place.
Two accounts placed matched bets on an exchange market at low odds on both teams, so as to pass the amount wagered from one side to the other. Exchanges work by having bettors on both sides; for a 10-to-1 shot, one provides the ten to the other's 1. If the match does not take the desired path to reach those odds, further trades are made to make up for it. Eventually £625,000 ($812,500) was traded on the game, a One-Day Cup League Two fixture.
"It developed from South American football," Smith says of fund-passing. "There's no suggestion these games were influenced by any of that. But the risk is that when you've got criminal organisations laundering money through a sport, their view is, why not make a bit more money there by making sure there is fixing to make sure the money [they are seeking to launder] does go in the right way? It's something we're very alive to."
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The latest season of the Hundred concluded on the weekend, but the Regulator's work in anti-corruption is entering a different, more challenging, phase.
The majority of English domestic cricketers will have designs on potentially lucrative opportunities further afield over the rest of the year. Some will take part in tournaments like the CPL, European T20 Premier League (ETPL) and the Canada Super 60 league - all ICC-approved - before the English summer has come to an end. All those not involved in international cricket - and some that are - are already looking ahead to the northern-hemisphere winter for off-season paydays. And a fair few will find themselves taking part in tournaments flagged as suspicious, while the Regulator keeps tabs, with fingers crossed.
"[English cricket's] risk is when our players go overseas," says Smith. "If players get corrupted, they can bring that problem back. If you're under the control of a criminal group, it doesn't really matter where you are. They're going to expect you to do what you're told to do."
All English players must apply for a "No Objection Certificate" (NOC) from the ECB that allows them to participate in any overseas competition. If the request is for a tournament regarded as an integrity risk, the Regulator will contact the player and their agent to relay the issues that have been reported from that particular tournament or team. Players and agents will then have to explain how the deal came about and show the veracity of the contract before an NOC is granted.
The Regulator also advises players to be as transparent as possible about all transactions. If you are paid in cash and are bringing it back to the UK, make sure the correct authorities have been informed. Players are even encouraged to report gifts, whether from their teams or third parties, to ensure those are covered. Being forthcoming adds an extra layer, protecting them in the event of any malicious allegations.
"The Hundred has a massive gambling market, and anything that has a massive market would always be identified as a risk" Smith says. "But then we throw a lot at protecting it, so the risk goes down. Whereas you have got overseas franchise tournaments that have got much smaller gambling markets with fewer protections. So their risk is actually higher.
"It's not just that volume equals risk. It's what else sits around it."