Biggest Match-Fixing Scandals in Cricket History, Ranked

Cricket’s biggest match-fixing scandal broke in April 2000, when a South African wiretap caught captain Hansie Cronje discussing cash with a bookmaker — a confession that exposed corruption at the sport’s highest level. A decade later, the 2010 Lord’s spot-fixing case put three Pakistan internationals in a British prison for arranging no-balls on demand. Between those two poles sits a longer list: Indian captains, Kenyan and West Indian internationals, county pros, and IPL franchise players, all caught, charged, and banned. Here are cricket’s 10 biggest fixing scandals, ranked and verified.

At a Glance: The Biggest Cricket Fixing Scandals

1. The Hansie Cronje Affair (South Africa, 2000)

Cronje was South Africa’s captain, publicly devout and widely trusted, which made his April 2000 confession land even harder. A wiretap caught him discussing payments with bookmaker Sanjay Chawla; he later admitted to South Africa’s King Commission he had taken money for information and, at times, for influence over outcomes. He received a lifetime ban and died in a 2002 plane crash before any reinstatement bid. The case proved corruption reached cricket’s top and directly led the ICC to found its Anti-Corruption Unit that year.

2. The 2000 Indian Match-Fixing Investigation

While Cronje’s story broke, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation was running a parallel probe implicating the country’s biggest names. Former captain Mohammad Azharuddin got a life ban, set aside by the Andhra Pradesh High Court in 2012 on procedural grounds, though he never played internationally again. Ajay Sharma also received a permanent ban; Ajay Jadeja and Manoj Prabhakar, whose 1997 allegations triggered the inquiry, got five-year bans later reduced. The probe showed bookmaking networks had reached the national team’s dressing room directly.

3. Salim Malik’s Life Ban (Pakistan)

Salim Malik, Pakistan’s captain through the 1990s, was banned for life by the PCB in 2000 after a judicial inquiry led by Justice Malik Mohammad Qayyum found he had offered teammates money to underperform, including approaches to Australians Shane Warne and Mark Waugh. He was the first modern-era international captain found guilty of orchestrating fixes from inside his own team, rather than merely accepting payments. A Lahore court overturned the ban in 2008 on a technicality, but Malik never played for Pakistan again.

4. Pakistan’s Lord’s Spot-Fixing Scandal (2010)

During Pakistan’s August 2010 Test at Lord’s, a News of the World sting filmed agent Mazhar Majeed guaranteeing exactly when bowlers would deliver pre-arranged no-balls — and the deliveries landed precisely as predicted. The ICC banned captain Salman Butt for 10 years (five suspended), Mohammad Asif for seven (two suspended), and Mohammad Amir, then 18, for five. A London court convicted all three of conspiracy in November 2011, jailing Butt two and a half years, Asif one year, and Amir six months — the only cricket-fixing case to send active internationals to prison.

5. The IPL 2013 Spot-Fixing Scandal (India)

Delhi Police arrested three Rajasthan Royals bowlers, S. Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan, and Ajit Chandila, in May 2013 on spot-fixing charges. The BCCI gave Sreesanth and Chavan life bans; the Supreme Court later reduced Sreesanth’s to seven years. A parallel probe exposed betting links through Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, and both franchises were suspended from the IPL for two years from 2016 — the first fixing scandal to reach a major global T20 league.

6. Pakistan Super League Spot-Fixing (2017)

A sting by undercover British police, working through bookie Yousef Anwar, exposed a fixing ring around the PSL’s second season. Opener Sharjeel Khan was banned five years (two and a half suspended) for agreeing to play deliberate dot balls for payment; Khalid Latif got a matching five-year ban and a fine for recruiting teammates into the scheme. Mohammad Irfan, Shahzaib Hasan, Nasir Jamshed, and Mohammad Nawaz all received separate sanctions for failing to report approaches, with Jamshed’s later extended to 10 years plus a UK prison term. Six players were sanctioned from one league season.

7. Marlon Samuels’ Repeated Bans (West Indies)

Marlon Samuels is one of a handful of players banned twice for corruption, 15 years apart. In 2008, the West Indies board banned him two years after he passed team information to Indian businessman Mukesh Kochhar and accepted a hotel benefit from him. In 2023, an ICC tribunal handed him a separate six-year ban for a different breach of the anti-corruption code. The two cases, spanning most of his playing and post-playing career, make him a rare repeat offender in the ICC’s disciplinary record.

8. Maurice Odumbe’s Bribery Ban (Kenya, 2004)

Maurice Odumbe captained Kenya through its best-ever World Cup run, reaching the 2003 semifinal, before an ICC investigation found he had accepted money from a bookmaker. He was banned from all cricket for five years in 2004, ending the career of the most recognizable player Kenyan cricket had produced. The case showed fixing networks reaching well beyond the game’s traditional powers, into an associate nation with far less institutional oversight than India, Pakistan, or South Africa.

9. Mervyn Westfield’s County Cricket Fix (England, 2012)

Essex fast bowler Mervyn Westfield admitted spot-fixing a 2009 domestic match against Durham, conceding a pre-agreed number of runs for £6,000 arranged through teammate Danish Kaneria. He was jailed four months in 2012 and banned from cricket for life by the ECB — the first case proving fixing had spread into English county cricket, not just internationals and franchise T20s.

10. Shakib Al Hasan’s Failure-to-Report Ban (Bangladesh, 2019)

Bangladesh’s captain and all-time leading all-rounder, Shakib Al Hasan, was banned two years (one suspended) by the ICC in October 2019 — not for fixing anything himself, but for failing to report three corrupt approaches from Indian businessman Deepak Agarwal in 2018 and during an IPL match. Shakib accepted the charges and served his active suspension before returning in October 2020, the clearest example of the ICC treating silence about an approach as seriously as accepting one.

How We Ranked These Scandals

Rankings weigh four factors: the seniority of players involved (captains rank above squad players), whether the case reached criminal courts or disciplinary tribunals only, the length and permanence of the ban, and the scandal’s lasting impact on how cricket is governed. Cases that reshaped anti-corruption policy, like Cronje’s, outrank ones confined to a single domestic or league fixture, even with a similarly severe ban.

Cricket’s Anti-Corruption Response in 2026

The ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit, formed directly because of the Cronje and CBI cases, now runs mandatory education for international and major-league players, restricts outsider access around teams, and requires players to report any corrupt approach or face sanction themselves, as Shakib Al Hasan learned. Franchise leagues including the IPL and PSL have added their own compliance officers on top of ICC oversight. As of 2026, no international team has produced a Cronje- or Malik-level captain-led scandal since 2010, though domestic and franchise cases, like the PSL’s 2017 sting, keep surfacing as fixers target competitions with less scrutiny than bilateral internationals.

Cricket’s corruption history sits alongside the sport’s greatest players of all time, several of whom played through the same era. For the format most targeted by fixers, see how IPL and other T20 leagues compare, and browse more explainers on the cricket hub for how the sport’s rules and records have evolved.

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