Afghanistan's Shafaq banned for six years for corruption

Kabul: Afghan cricketer Shafiqullah Shafaq was on Sunday, May 10 handed a six-year ban from all forms of cricket by the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) after the wicket-keeper batsman accepted his involvement in corrupt activities during the APLT20 and Bangladesh Premier League (BPL).

Shafaq accepted four charges relating to breach of the ACB Anti-Corruption Code during the inaugural edition of the Afghanistan Premier League T20 in 2018 and the 2019 edition of the BPL.

“Shafaq was charged under breach of article 2.1.1 which is directly related to “fixing or contriving in any way or otherwise influencing improperly, or being a party to any agreement or effort to fix or contrive in any way” which also includes deliberate under-performance,” the ACB said in a statement.

“The breach of article 2.1.3 relates to “seeking, accepting, offering or agreeing to accept any bribe or other Reward to (a) fix or to contrive in any way or otherwise to influence improperly the result, progress, conduct or any other aspect of any Domestic Match ”

The other two charges relate to failure to report a corrupt approach to the anti-corruption unit.

The 30-year-old Shafaq has played in 24 ODIs and 46 T20Is. His last international appearance was in a T20 game against Bangladesh in September, 2019.

“Under the provisions of the Code, Mr. Shafaq chose to admit the charges levied against him and agreed to the sanctions by ACB in lieu of an Anti-Corruption Tribunal hearing,” the ACB press release stated.

Addressing the matter, ACB’s Senior Anti-Corruption manager, Sayed Anwar Shah Quraishi said: “This is a very serious offense where a senior national player is involved in the corruption of a high-profile domestic game in APL T20 2018.”

“The player had also attempted but failed to get one of his teammates to engage in corruption in another high-profile game during the BPL 2019” he further added.