Daily Times

Middle order batsman Umar Akmal appeared on Al Jazeera‘s latest documentary titled ‘Cricket’s Match Fixers: the Munawar Files’ on match-fixing as a possible suspect.

In a documentary released on October 21, Al Jazeera claimed that they have evidences against several top cricketers from around the world.

Among those cricketers was Umar Akmal, who was shown in the film meeting and taking a bag from an associate of Aneel Munawar. There was no image or evidence of if Akmal took the bag with him.

Aneel Munawar, an alleged match-fixer on ICC’s radar, is said to have been involved in 26 instances of match-fixing in 15 international fixtures during 2011-12. He is also said to be part of the D-Company, an organised-crime syndicate run by Dawood Ibrahim.

As shown in the documentary, information passed by Aneel proves to be correct on 25 out of 26 instances, with his sole failure being by a margin of just 1-run.

The documentary also claimed that the International Cricket Council (ICC) knew about Munawar since 2010 and that the cricketing body did nothing to counter the malpractice for almost 7 years.

Al Jazeera claimed that Munawar uses the same methods and language that he used during their undercover investigation in 2016 and 2017, when he gave advance details about alleged fixes in two Test matches in India.

ICC anti-corruption unit head Alex Marshall in September said that investigations were 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.