Some people may not know it, but a World Cup is being played now. In the part of the world I come from, it's simply the World Cup; the soccer version usually follows three years later.

Yes, cricket may be limited to South Asian countries - where it has a fanatical following and huge financial backing - and fellow Commonwealth nations. But for the last two weeks it has had global exposure for all the wrong reasons.

The murder in his Jamaica hotel room of Pakistani coach Bob Woolmer, a former England international player, has been making headlines around the world, even in countries like China where cricket is a little insect which makes a big noise.

Speculation has been rife about the motive. The common thread is that Woolmer was killed by bookies threatened that they would be exposed in a book he was to have published soon. It didn't help that Pakistan along with India, embroiled in betting scandals a few years earlier was knocked out of the tournament by an unfancied Irish team.

The game has been tarnished in recent years by big-time illegal betting controlled by crime syndicates based in the Indian subcontinent and in neighboring areas. No one would put this crime in the distant Caribbean islands beyond their reach.

The explanation could be simple: Betting (except for state-sponsored lotteries) is illegal on the subcontinent, unlike in other cricketing nations like England or Australia, where residents can go online or to the local branch of any legal bookmaker for a little wager.

But is it simplistic to suggest that gambling be legalized wherever possible to reduce the criminal component? To make it fun, fair and fructiferous to the poor?

In China, there is strong opposition. At last month's annual session of the lawmaking National People's Congress, deputy Luo Yifeng submitted a proposal for a law to fight gambling, especially by government officials and executives of State-owned companies.

But there are other voices, too. Last year, a leading gambling expert called on the government to legalize betting products to cash in on some of the $88 billion bet illegally each year.

"According to our market research, the revenue gained from the legal lottery in China is a 10th of the illegal gambling revenue. In 2005, the total revenue of China's legal lotteries reached 70 billion yuan ($8.8 billion), while the illegal betting revenue was around 700 billion yuan," said Wang Xuehong, head of the China Center for Lottery Studies at Peking University.

To put the figures in perspective, the money wagered overseas that year was equivalent to the annual revenue of the country's tourism industry.

Illegal gambling on the mainland involves Internet betting (increasingly more difficult to monitor), underground casinos and private lotteries, said Wang, contending that if some of these categories were legalized, government coffers would benefit immensely.

"The market is there and gambling is part of human nature," she argued.

No one who has visited Macao would argue that it was Chinese from the mainland who propelled the special administrative region ahead of Las Vegas last year to the No 1 gambling spot in the world.

Beijing is in a unique position to tap in on the strengths of the two special administrative regions: Macao, where gambling drives the economy, and Hong Kong, where gambling revenues are used for the social good.

The revenues, or taxes, could go a long way toward funding rural development, improving welfare in urban areas or providing compulsory education for all.

That could be a safe bet.

E-mail: ravi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 04/04/2007 page10)