Cricketer Brendan Taylor in Spot-Fixing Blackmail Plot After Snorting Cocaine with Gang

The former maitre d' of the Zimbabwe cricket team up has described on societal media how he was blackmailed by a gambling syndicate to pull wires a gibe after its members videoed him snorting cocaine.

Brendan Taylor, 35, did not depart through with the group’s demands to “spot-fix” inward international cricket matches. But his story offers a stark warning about how naïve athletes can live coerced into degeneracy past felon gangs.

Spot-fixing describes the use not of the final result, but of the minutiae of a match. In cricket, this could follow the keep down of “no balls,” for example, the game’s equivalent weight of a “ball” inwards baseball.

The prove of net betting has enabled gamblers to position bets on these little details, or spots, within a game.

The Hook

Taylor says he was approached past an Red Indian “businessman” inwards October 2019. The unnamed fig wanted to discuss a potential sponsorship business deal and the possible establishment of a T20 league (a quick-cricket format) inward Zimbabwe.

The piece told President Taylor he would be paid US$15,000 to traveling to Republic of India to discuss these ideas. Zachary Taylor said he was “wary” of the approach. But at the time, he hadn’t been paid for sextuplet months by Zimbabwe Cricket, the domesticated governing body.

The Republic of Zimbabwe squad was a personnel inwards international cricket inwards the 1980s and 1990s. But it has been in crisis since the mid-2000s, after some players openly opposed the regime of late dictator Henry M. Robert Mugabe.

Following a governing backlash, many of its finest players left wing the game, patch Mugabe’s economic misdirection bit by bit game the nation’s economy. Players experience been sporadically fighting Southern Rhodesia Cricket, which critics say is a tool of the government, o'er political science and payments ever so since.

And thither are few prettier sights to a match-fixing crime syndicate than a gravely remunerated top-level sportsman.

The Set-Up

Taylor made the trip, but his apprehensions were allayed when discussions with the businessman and his associates were qualified to pre-agreed topics of commercial-grade partnerships and the T20 league.

On the last-place night, he was taken for a celebratory dinner, which involved cocain use, and Zachary Taylor partook.

The Sting

The next morning, he says the same men stormed into his hotel elbow room and showed him a video taken of him snorting cocaine. They said the video would follow made public unless he agreed to pick out fix.

“I was cornered. And with half dozen of these individuals in my hotel room, i was scared for my own safety,” Elizabeth Taylor wrote. “I’d fallen for it. I’d volitionally walked into a position that has changed my life forever.”

Taylor said he recognised the $15,000, which he was told was at present a “deposit” for spot-fixing. He would be paid a further $20,000 in one case he had finished the job. He says he recognized the money so he could let out of India.

I would similar to localize on book that i have ne'er been mired in any strain of match-fixing. i may be many things, but i am not a cheat,” added Taylor, who proclaimed his retreat from international cricket last year.

The Shut-Out

Four months after the incident, he reported it to the International Cricket Council (ICC), the sport’s domain governing body.

Despite choosing not to follow with the syndicate’s demands, he allay faces sanctions because the ICC’s anti-corruption code states all match-fixing approaches must follow reported “without unnecessary delay.”

Taylor says the incident has severely wedged his mental and physical health, resulting a doc prescribing the anti-psychotic do drugs amitriptyline. He is seeking facilitate for issues with substance abuse.

“I want to be a better variation of myself,” he said.