In a shocking development on Tuesday, the International Cricket Council (ICC) on Tuesday suspended Bangladesh captain and world's top-ranked ODI all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan for his failure to report corrupt approaches. (More Cricket News)
The 32-year-old accepted three charges relating to requests for "inside information for betting purposes". And the approaches were made during an international tri-series also involving Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe in January 2018, and that year's Indian Premier League.
According to an ICC release, Shakib admitted he was aware his phone number had been given to Deepak Aggarwal, "an individual known to the ACU and suspected of involvement in corruption in cricket".
And the three approaches were made on - 1) 19 January 2018, after a match in the tri-series that day, 2) 23 January 2018, Shakib received a message from Aggarwal which said "Bro anything in this series?", 3) 26 April 2018, during the SunRisers Hyderabad vs Kings XI Punjab IPL match. He did not report any of these to the ICC.
In that IPL match, Shakib scored 28 runs off 29 balls with the help of three fours to help SunRisers set a target of 133 runs at Hyderabad. He then took two wickets, conceding 18 runs in three overs as his team won the match by 13 runs.
The BCCI's Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) head Ajit Singh said that investigations into Shakib's breach of anti-corruption code during the game was completely handled by the ICC.
"That particular IPL season we are referring to, the anti-corruption matters were handled by the ICC. So the complete investigation was carried out by the ICC. The BCCI has no role in it," Singh, a former DGP of Rajasthan, told PTI.
Singh replaced former Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar after IPL 2018.
