Bangladesh captain Shakib banned for breaching corruption code

Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan was banned from all cricket for two years with one year of that suspended on Tuesday (29), after the all-rounder was found to have breached the International Cricket Council's Anti-Corruption code.

The ICC said Shakib, a prolific run-scorer and the top all-rounder in the ICC's one-day international rankings, had accepted three charges of failing to report "approaches he received to engage in corrupt conduct".

If the 32-year-old observes the suspension, he will be able to play again from Oct. 29, 2020, the ICC said.

Shakib has played 56 tests, 206 ODIs and 76 T20s for Bangladesh. He has scored more than 11,000 runs and claimed over 500 wickets across three formats.

At the 2019 Cricket World Cup in England, Shakib finished as the third-highest run-scorer with 606 in eight matches, including two hundreds and five fifties.

The ICC said in its statement https://www.icc-cricket.com/media-releases/1473892 that the player did not report two approaches he received during a tri-series between Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe in January 2018 and one more over a 2018 Indian Premier League match between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kings XI Punjab.

"I am obviously extremely sad to have been banned from the game I love, but I completely accept my sanction for not reporting the approaches," Shakib said.

"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 (Anti-Corruption Unit) team to support their education programme and ensure young players don’t make the same mistake I did."

Shakib recently led a strike by Bangladesh's cricketers, which they called off a week ago when the country's cricket board accepted most of their demands including pay rises and other benefits.