World number one male tennis player Novak Djokovic said he was approached to fix a match eight years ago as allegations of corruption in tennis rocked the start of the Australian Open.<\/p>\n
Djokovic was reportedly offered $200,000 to throw the match, in an incident which gives an insight into the murky world of match-fixing — which the Serb called “a crime in sport”.<\/p>\n
Djokovic and Serena Williams, the top-ranked players in the men\u2019s and women\u2019s game, were adamant there was no wrongdoing beyond minor incidents on the edges of the sport, and pointed out that no hard evidence had been produced.<\/p>\n
The BBC and BuzzFeed claimed 16 players who had reached the top 50 in the past decade, including Grand Slam champions, had been repeatedly suspected of fixing matches for betting syndicates.<\/p>\n
The report prompted a swift denial from authorities that any evidence of match-fixing had been suppressed, as well as speculation over the identities of the players involved.<\/p>\n
Djokovic, after opening with a win over South Korea`s Chung Hyeon, played down the report but he also said he was targeted in 2007 to throw a first-round match at St Petersburg.<\/p>\n
“I was not approached directly. I was approached through people that were working with me at that time,” he told reporters in Melbourne on Monday.<\/p>\n
“Of course, we threw it away right away. It didn`t even get to me, the guy that was trying to talk to me, didn`t even get to me directly. There was nothing out of it,” the 10-time Grand Slam champion added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
World number one male tennis player Novak Djokovic said he was approached to fix a match eight years ago as allegations of corruption in tennis rocked the start of the Australian Open. Djokovic was reportedly offered $200,000 to throw the match, in an incident which gives an insight into the murky world of match-fixing — which the Serb called “a crime in sport”. Djokovic and Serena Williams, the top-ranked players in the men’s and women’s game, were adamant there was no wrongdoing beyond minor incidents on the edges of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1822,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1823,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions\/1823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}