By Sportingintelligence 15 February 2011 . Match-fixing and betting-related corruption have been cited in recent years by various senior sports figures as the biggest threat to sport in the near future. Michel Platini, the head of Uefa, has said so numerous times now, including in this interview from November 2010, when he said: “To fix […]

By Nick Harris 4 February 2011 The three Pakistan cricketers at the centre of the ‘spot-fix’ scandal arising from the fourth Test against England at Lord’s last summer are to face criminal charges, the Crown Prosecution Service has announced today. Separately, Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir will discover on Saturday the verdicts from […]

By Nick Harris SPECIAL REPORT 3 January 2011 This is the story of an investigation into tennis integrity; of a mysterious betting coup at Wimbledon in the summer of 2009; of the protestations of innocence by Wayne Odesnik (the player who lost that match); of the different stories that Odesnik told about his physical condition […]

By Nick Harris 19 December 2010 Salman Butt, Pakistan’s suspended cricket captain, told Sky Sports News last week that some of the £29,000 cash found in his hotel room amid spot-fixing allegations at the Lord’s Test was from opening an ice-cream parlour called Afters, located in Tooting Bec, south London. That claim was widely reported, […]

By Nick Harris 12 December 2010 John Higgins completed a dream return from suspension late on Sunday night by winning the UK Championship final 10-9 after a nail-biting comeback in an epic to-the-wire final in Telford against Mark Williams. Snooker has made far too many headlines for the wrong reasons in 2010 but this was […]

By Nick Harris 6 December 2010 John Higgins celebrated his returned to major action following his six month ban with a 9-6 win over Stephen Lee in the UK Championship in Telford, and faces Graeme Dott next for a place in the quarter-finals. But the Scot has conceded he will never shake off the stigma […]

By Nick Harris 14 November 2010 John Higgins completed the perfect return to competitive snooker this evening by winning the first event he’s played since April. The former world No1 won the final of Euro Players Tour Championship in Hamm, Germany by beating Shaun Murphy 4-2. The final was Higgins’ seventh match since Friday; he also […]

By Nick Harris 12 November 2010 The former world No1, John Higgins, has returned to action today after a six-month ban with a win in his first match, 4-2 over Joe Jogia, in the first round of the Euro Players Tour Championship in Hamm, Germany. The event is minor but the victory a massive step […]

By Nick Harris 29 September 2010 The Crown Prosecution Service has told sportingintelligence today that it is not yet in a position to decide whether there is any criminal case against any of the Pakistan cricketers at the centre of the Lord’s “spot fix” scandal, let alone close to pressing charges. The case is complicated […]

By Nick Harris 20 September 2010 The date of John Higgins’ return to competitive snooker will be dictated to some extent by  the health of his father, John Snr, who is suffering from cancer and whose condition will occupy the Higgins family above all else for the immediate future. In a bitter irony in the […]