Police at Canberra's Manuka Oval on Tuesday escorted a man from the venue after they suspected he was using a mobile phone to transmit live information on play from the ground for the purposes of offshore betting.

The attention of the crowd on an overcast day in the capital was fixed on the action on the field as David Warner's third one-day international hundred in his last five 50-over innings for Australia led the hosts to a total of 5-378 in the second match of the Chappell-Hadlee series against New Zealand.



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The focus of security and police, however, in the afternoon was on a spectator who they believed to be sending updates from the match in real time or betting live in-play with a foreign bookmaker.

The so-called practice of pitchsiding, which allows those involved to take advantage of delays of up to 15 seconds in the broadcasting of games overseas, is not illegal but it is a breach of Cricket Australia's terms and conditions for entry and the game's anti-corruption officials have been very active in attempting to stamp it out in recent seasons, claiming it undermines the integrity of the code.

The vigilance of binocular-wielding officials hasn't put off those seeking to gain a betting edge, however, if Tuesday is any example.

The man who was questioned and then tossed out of Manuka Oval by half a dozen police officers during Australia's innings is the first to be ejected from an international match this summer.

He is unlikely to be the last.

There were a series of such instances during the World Cup last year including several in Canberra, where spectators were ejected and prohibited from attending cricket venues in three separate matches.

Two summers ago British man Rajeen Mulchandani was convicted of trespassing and fined $1200 after being tossed out of three Big Bash League matches at ANZ Stadium and breaching a CA ban.

How many are eluding officialdom, though, is unclear.

Crowd members engaged in the activity are not necessarily easy to identify, although anti-corruption officials will scour crowds looking for signs such as spectators wearing headphones and speaking on the phone at length or surreptitiously sending messages on a smart phone or a laptop.

Information transmitted from a ground in real time is typically used to bet with unregulated offshore operators on markets such as the overall result or run brackets, where the advantage of even a few seconds can be very profitable.

The pitchsiders can't gain an edge by betting with corporate bookmakers in Australia where under the law there is no live in-play betting permitted via the internet and the time it takes to submit a bet on the phone erases any advantage of being at a venue.

The Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports, of which cricket is a member and whose executive director is former CA and International Cricket Council chief executive Malcolm Speed, has lobbied for several years for changes to the Interactive Gambling Act to legalise online live in-play betting as a way of making local agencies more competitive against foreign rivals.

In the absence of those changes cricket authorities' hardline stance continues.

And with the punishment of being questioned and marched out of a ground unlikely to deter too many pitchsiders and their associates given the potential financial rewards, another summer of interrogations and ejections awaits.