B’desh captain Shakib banned for breaching corruption code

Reuters: Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan was banned from all cricket for two years with one year of that suspended on Tuesday, 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 program 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.

India, Bangladesh to play first day-night test in Kolkata next month

Reuters: India will take on Bangladesh in both nations’ first ever day-night test match, to be played at Eden Gardens in Kolkata from 22-26 November as the second game of a two-match series.

Newly appointed Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president Sourav Ganguly, a long-time supporter of day-night tests, first proposed the idea to home side captain Virat Kohli before speaking with Bangladesh Cricket Board officials.

“Day-night test cricket is a huge step forward and we believe it will bring back the crowd into stadiums and a whole lot of young children to the sport,” Ganguly said in a statement on Tuesday.

Bangladesh will be without their all-rounder captain Shakib Al Hasan, who was banned from all cricket for at least a year on Tuesday after he was found to have breached the International Cricket Council’s Anti-Corruption code.

Ganguly said the match would help support test cricket, the longest format of the game, which has seen dwindling audiences in recent years.

“Test cricket is of utmost priority, and we at BCCI will leave no stone unturned to bring this format back to its feet,” the former India captain said.

India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Ireland are the only teams among the 12 test-playing nations to have not yet played day-night tests.

One of the major concerns for Bangladesh will be the lack of match practice with the pink balls used in day-night games, having only played one first class match with them in the country in February 2013.

“We’re really looking forward to the challenge,” Bangladesh head coach Russell Domingo told reporters. “We’re not going to have a lot of time to prepare with the pink ball, but it’s the same for India.”

The tour also includes three Twenty20 internationals, with the first match to be held in Delhi on Sunday.