LAHORE: The head of International Cricket Council’s anti-corruption unit, Alex Marshall, has said that investigations are underway against Pakistan batsman Umar Akmal. Earlier, this year, Akmal during an interview said, he was offered $200,000 by fixers to leave two deliveries in one of the matches. He also claimed that he was offered money to skip matches against India. “I was once offered $200,000 for leaving two deliveries. I was also offered to skip matches against India,” he said in the interview. The batsman also said that he was approached during ICC World Cup, including the 2015 edition played in Australia and New Zealand.
However, Akmal had failed to mention if he had reported this to the anti-corruption unit or not. According to ICC anti-corruption code 2.4.4 and 2.4.5, players are bound to report all the corrupt approaches made to them during any event and failure of doing so carry a minimum punishment of five years. Moreover, the ICC had conducted Akmal’s interview two months ago regarding the allegations. The out-of-favour batsman was sent back from last year’s Champions Trophy after being declared unfit and was also dropped from the Lahore Qalandars side after failing to perform with the bat.
Published in Daily Times, September 26th 2018.