Rachit Bhatia says he was paid 60 lakh a match, and the DDCA has written to the BCCI
A Tehelka sting has a former Ranji Trophy player on camera describing a coded pipeline for playing elevens, and separate claims that IPL information reached a contact in London. The Delhi association says the checking belongs to the board, and none of the claims has been established by any authority.
Sep 22, 2026
The Delhi and District Cricket Association wrote to the BCCI on 22 September, and what it asked for was instructions. A sting operation published by Tehelka has put a former Ranji Trophy player on camera talking about selling team information to bookmakers, and the association wants the board to tell it how to proceed.
DDCA secretary Ashok Sharma confirmed the letter the same day. None of what is on the recording has been tested by an anti-corruption inquiry, a police investigation or a tribunal. It is a set of claims made by one man who did not know he was being filmed, and the association’s position is that verifying them belongs to the people who can pull phone records.
What the man on the tape says
Rachit Bhatia made his first-class debut for Nagaland in the 2018-19 Ranji Trophy and played six matches for the state. He also turned out twice in that season’s Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. On the recording he tells the reporter he now works around Delhi school cricket as a coach and selector at under-14, under-17 and under-19 level, which is his own account of himself and not something anyone has confirmed.
What he describes is a pipeline for information rather than for runs or wickets. Two separate pipelines run through the tape. Chennai Super Kings playing information reportedly went to a contact in London over Snapchat, while a domestic playing eleven was passed on through a coded channel where emoji stood in for names. He says he was paid about 60 lakh rupees a match for Chennai Super Kings information during the 2025 IPL season, five matches in all, which he puts at 3 crore. He also claims he bowled two deliberate wides in that 2018-19 Syed Mushtaq Ali campaign for 8 lakh a ball.
Every one of those numbers is his. No board, franchise or player has confirmed any of it, and no case has been registered against anyone who appears in the footage.
The Delhi Premier League game at the centre of it
The part that lands on the DDCA’s own desk sits in its own competition. The sting was built around a Delhi Premier League match between Central Delhi Kings and North Delhi Strikers at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on 3 August. Bhatia told the undercover reporter that someone inside a squad would pass him the final eleven before it was announced.
Tehelka’s account is that the eleven it was given in advance matched the side that was officially named. That is the one claim in the package testable against a document rather than against a man’s word, and it is why a league that finished its third season with South Delhi Superstarz beating Central Delhi Kings in the final is now being discussed for something else entirely.
The association’s answer
Sharma’s defence of this year’s DPL rests on staffing. “We have attached SLOs with every team this year and all our arrangements have been watertight,” he said. He also pointed to a case that ran the other way inside the same tournament, a Delhi player who reported a corrupt approach in writing to the anti-corruption wing, from a cricketer based in Uttar Pradesh who was also playing a T20 league in that state.
That is the system doing what it is built to do. A player is approached, the player reports it, the wing logs the complaint. How much comfort you take from it depends on how many approaches you think go unreported for every one that does not.
On the older allegations Sharma was careful about jurisdiction. Once an official letter comes back from the BCCI, the DDCA says its anti-corruption department will check the details and phone records as far as it can, that the IPL-era machinery was the board’s rather than the association’s, and that it will abide by whatever the board decides. Video footage goes over if it is asked for.
Why state leagues keep turning up in these stories
Domestic T20 leagues run by state associations have become the soft target in Indian cricket. They carry live streams and published team sheets, they draw betting markets, and they are played by cricketers who are nowhere near a central contract. In August the BCCI extended its anti-corruption unit to cover every match in every state T20 league for the first time, after a Tamil Nadu Premier League player was fined and barred for taking a phone into the players’ area.
Where this particular tape goes depends on material nobody outside the investigation has seen. For now there is an allegation and an association waiting on a letter. There is also a reminder that the cheapest thing to sell in cricket is a sheet of paper with eleven names on it.