Analysing Shakib Al Hasan's performance from the IPL 2018 match between SRH and KXIP which got him banned

Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan was banned by ICC for two years, one year of that in suspension, on Tuesday for not reporting the corrupt approaches on numerous occasions. The person named Deepak Aggarwal had messaged Shakib for inside information twice during the tri-series involving Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe in January 2018 and once during the IPL 2018 ahead of April 26 match.

On January 19, 2018, the left-hander received a WhatsApp message from Aggarwal saying, “Do we work in this or I wait till the IPL.” The word ‘work’ in this message was related to the inside information which the bookie wanted. Aggarwal once again approached Shakib during the same series and then again messaged Shakib Al Hasan on April 26, 2018, ahead of the Sunrisers Hyderabad’s (SRH) game against the Kings XI Punjab (KXIP).

According to the WhatsApp chat messages released, Shakib didn’t give any inside information to Aggarwal. But his mistake was to not report the approach to the ICC’s Anti Corruption Unit (ACU) instantly.

Here we analyse Shakib Al Hasan’s performance in 26th April IPL 2018 game:

Shakib Al Hasan, playing for SRH, came out to bat with his team in deep trouble at 27/3. Interestingly, he was dismissed off the very second ball he faced for a duck. But Barinder Sran, the KXIP pacer, had bowled a no-ball which was spotted after Manish Pandey, who was standing at the non-striker’s end, insisted the umpire’s to check the bowler’s front foot with the third umpire.

The 32-year-old then made the opposition pay for the reprieve and stitched a vital 52-run stand with Pandey. With the team’s score reading 79 in the 14th over, Shakib tried to hit Mujeeb Ur Rahman only to hole out to long-on. He scored 28 runs off 29 deliveries hitting only three boundaries. SRH though was propelled by Pandey’s unbeaten half-century as they went on to post 132 runs for the loss of six wickets after 20 overs.

Shakib shines with the ball

Shakib Al Hasan though shined with the ball. He was the last bowler to be introduced into the attack and the left-arm spinner picked wickets of Mayank Agarwal and Aaron Finch to return with the figures of 2/18 in his three overs. Despite starting off well, KXIP collapsed from 55/0 to 119/10 and Shakib also played a crucial role in his team’s victory.

His partnership with Pandey proved to be important as well and then the all-rounder shined with the ball. However, Ankit Rajpoot of KXIP was given the Man of the Match award for his excellent figures of 5/14 in four overs.