NEW DELHI — Indian police have arrested three men suspected of placing illegal bets on Indian Premier League matches as authorities crack down on gambling rackets that emerge around the billion-dollar franchise every year.

The trio were accused of running an online betting syndicate from a residence in New Delhi. Nearly all gambling is illegal in India but is still a huge underground industry.

"We arrested the three on Saturday while they were betting during the Mumbai Indians and Delhi Daredevils match," Youdhbir Singh, a senior police officer in Delhi, told AFP on Tuesday. "They were insisting that they are first-timers and it was just a one-off incident, but we know that they were doing it since the start of the league on April 7."

Eleven mobile phones, a laptop, a television set and a digital channel receiver were seized, Singh added. Media reports say police have busted other syndicates, in the southern city of Hyderabad and the eastern state of West Bengal, in the first two weeks of the 11th season of the lucrative IPL franchise.

The money-spinning IPL, the world's most popular domestic cricket league, has been plagued by controversy since its inception in 2008. Corruption and match-fixing have often taken centerstage.

A spot-fixing scandal in 2013 led to the Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals being suspended in 2015 for two seasons. Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, a Rajasthan Royals bowler, was banned for life along with teammates Ankit Chavan and Ajit Chandila.

They were arrested along with scores of bookies as part of a probe into allegations that players had underperformed in return for cash from bookmakers. Criminal charges were later dropped but the players were banned for breaching the code of conduct of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

Stewart wants IPL cut-off date

Surrey director of cricket Alec Stewart wants a cut-off date for county players to join the Indian Premier League (IPL) after losing seamer Tom Curran to the Twenty20 tournament just days before the start of their championship campaign.

Curran went unsold in February's IPL auction but Kolkata Knight Riders recruited him for around $247,000 earlier this month to replace injured Australian paceman Mitchell Starc.

Yorkshire suffered a double blow with the similar late departures of David Willey and Liam Plunkett, leading county coaches to discuss the issue at Edgbaston last week. "It's far from ideal losing Tom so late," former England captain Stewart was quoted as saying by ESPNCricinfo http://www.espncricinfo.com.

"I hope in time this will be looked at. The IPL is not going anywhere — I fully understand players wanting to be part of it because, one, it's a good competition and, second, it helps your bank balance.

"The problem is when you get the phone calls I got for Tom, and Martyn Moxon (Yorkshire's director of cricket) got for Willey and Plunkett, your planning goes out of the window."

The readiness of county players ahead of the English season makes them prime IPL targets to replace injured players in the lucrative Twenty20 league and Stewart suggested that a fixed final recruitment date would help resolve the issue.

"All I think needs to be looked at is a cut-off, ideally a month before the championship starts," he said. "If you get picked up in the auction, that's fine — it's at the end of February, so that's six or seven weeks before the start of the season.

"Then everyone knows that, even if you don't get picked up in the auction, there's a three- or four-week window, but once that has gone, you can't then go and play (in the IPL)."

Stewart also demanded a redistribution of the money the England and Wales cricket Board (ECB) receives for allowing its players to take part in the IPL.

"We have discovered that the ECB have been receiving 10 percent of the overall contract a player gets from IPL for a number of years and this year it is 20 percent," he said.

"Should the ECB be keeping that? Or should that money come back to the county, who are the ones who miss out? I personally believe all that money should come back to the county if you are not an ECB-contracted player because of the money that has been invested." — Agencies