While it is true that in cricket's current crisis bookmakers from India and Pakistan play a sordid role, it would be naïve to assume that betting on sports is not present in Bangladesh. Betting on the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) T20 was seen to be rife in the first edition, with a betting ring in Sirajganj taking bets over the phone from punters all over the country.
It was mostly match results that were wagered upon for the BPL, but spread betting was prevalent too. Spread betting is a form that has bettors placing money on smaller outcomes within a cricket match -- how many runs will come in a particular over, how many wickets a particular bowler will take, etc. It is spread-betting from which the practice of spot-fixing takes form.
While betting is still seen as not much more than a pastime for the financially adventurous, there are certain exclusive groups who take it very seriously, placing bets of more than Tk 10,000 at a time on outcomes of matches and spread-bets alike.
More than the BPL, the biggest windfall for the person organising the bets -- who generally takes a 15 per cent cut -- comes during the Indian Premier League (IPL). Widely televised sporting events like the Spanish La Liga and the English Premier League also attract gamblers, but are not nearly as lucrative as cricket matches.
There is also a much more basic and therefore pervasive form of betting that goes on whether it is a first, second or third division match. These bettors can be seen most commonly at the Dhaka University Cricket Ground. For them, the match is secondary to the activity of placing bets on small outcomes of the game in progress.
They are mostly lungi-clad commoners who take great joy in placing myriad bets on a single match. Near the end of the match they place bets on the result, but they are completely impartial in their betting, as the sport for them is the betting itself and not the game of cricket.
They are a throwback to times when the sport emerged as an adjunct to the addictive habit of gambling. They also provide a window into how betting leads to fixing, as they sometimes sneak behind fielders positioned at the boundary to tell them to let some balls go or tell bowlers to bowl badly in order to further their monetary cause.

This report is a condensation of two earlier reports written by Mohammad Isam for The Daily Star on September 3, 2010 and April 14, 2012.