'Raina was with agent in Sri Lanka, she has no bookie links'

Published>Tue, Oct 26 10 05:52 AM

The woman with whom Suresh Raina was spotted at the Indian team hotel during the Asia Cup in Sri Lanka is his agent, Ritika Sajdeh, a manager with Cornerstone Sports and Entertainment Private Limited (CSE). Bunty Sajdeh, CSE's chief operating officer and a cousin of Ritika's said neither his firm nor its employees, including Ritika, had any link with illegal punters or bookies.

London's Sunday Times claimed that the ICC was probing why the Indian cricket board had failed to react to a Sri Lanka Cricket report that the batsman had been seen with a woman linked to an associate of a bookie when India were in Sri Lanka in July-August. Both BCCI and SLC have rubbished the charge.

Ritika has been managing Raina's portfolio, and was in Sri Lanka to brief him on the nitty-gritty of his endorsement deals. She has also been handling his media commitments, as the 23-year-old batsmen prefers that requests for interviews are routed through his agent.

This was not the first time that Raina had been spotted in her company, but Bunty Sajdeh, who is also a close friend of Yuvraj Singh's, insisted there was no reason for eyebrows to be raised.

'We're not linked'

"It is absurd and untrue for anyone to say that Ritika or Cornerstone have any links with bookies. The BCCI has already clarified that. We also manage Bollywood actors, including Neil Nitin Mukesh and Sonakshi Sinha," Bunty Sajdeh told The Indian Express on Monday.

Raina is one of seven sportsmen with CSE, an event and talent management company that Bunty formed in May 2008. The others are Raina's India teammates Yuvraj, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Dinesh Karthik, tennis player Sania Mirza and rising racing star Armaan Ibrahim.

Source: Web Search