Bangladesh Test and T20 captain Shakib Al Hasan has accepted a two-year ban issued by the International Cricket Council (ICC) after being found guilty of three charges of ‘breaching the ICC Anti-Corruption Code’. One year of the ban has been suspended.
Al Hasan was found guilty of failing to disclose information to the relevant authorities when approached by match-fixing organizations on three separate occasions. These included the Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe Tri-Series in January 2018 and/ or the IPL 2018 as well as a specific match between the Sunrisers Hyderabad v Kings XI Punjab on 26 April 2018.
Al Hasan has accepted the charges and stated that he takes full responsibility for his actions.
“Like the majority of players and fans around the world, I want cricket to be a corruption free sport and I am looking forward to working with the ICC ACU team to support their education programme and ensure young players don’t make the same mistake I did.”
Providing he satisfies the conditions of his suspension relating to the suspended year sentence, he will be free to resume international cricket on 29 October 2020.
This will likely see him miss the T20 World Cup in Australia next year which begins on 8 October 2020 with the final scheduled for the 15 November.
Al Hasan was one of the leading performers during the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup where he scored 606 runs at an average of 86.57 as well as taking 11 wickets across his eight matches.
